The Strange Road of Materials

By Eleonora Del Federico, Anivia Deng, Gabrielle Smith, and Renato Miracco

"This presentation highlights the results of the STEAMPlant-funded project “The Strange Road of Materials,” which involved scientific research on the unusual materials used by artist Licio Isolani—namely, ground metals such as aluminum, copper, tin, zinc, gold and bronze shreds painted on aluminum foil. These materials enabled Isolani to create reflective surfaces that evoke an illusion of three dimensions and luminous openings, enhanced by traditional opaque pigments like carbon black and burnt umber.

Licio Isolani (1931–2015) belonged to a generation of avant-garde artists working in New York City during the 1950s–1960s, who sought new materials to express their ideas in innovative, personal ways. Inspired by Balla and Boccioni’s early 20th-century theory of creating a “New Art Form for a New World,” Isolani explored recycled and found materials in the late 1950s, contemporaneous with Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg, and Alberto Burri. He experimented extensively with unique unconventional sources like glitzy party decorations, ribbons, wrapping papers, and tinfoils, prized for their chromatic transparency and reflective qualities to evoke magical, illusory spaces that interacted dynamically with light and the viewer's perspective.

Few artworks from this generation (e.g., those by Fontana and Burri) have been scientifically studied. Thus, analyzing Isolani’s materials expands our understanding of this understudied, innovative era.

As part of the study, ten of Isolani’s paintings dating from 1958–1962 were analyzed using XRF (X-ray fluorescence) and FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy) to identify unknown pigments and binding media. XRF determines elemental composition by bombarding the painting with X-rays, which are absorbed by atoms in the irradiated area and re-emitted as a spectrum revealing their signatures—and thus possible pigments. Results showed ground metals as the primary component in all paintings, alongside traditional pigments like red lead, lead chromates, ultramarine, and Prussian blue.
FTIR identifies molecular makeup by detecting vibrational frequencies of asymmetrical chemical bonds and converting them into a spectrum, revealing bond types and the nature of paint binding media.

To interpret the FTIR spectra, standards with traditional (oil) and modern binders (acrylic, alkyd, and polyvinyl acetate) were prepared and artificially aged to simulate Isolani’s degraded paints. Overall, the full range of materials used by artists of Isolani’s generation remains incompletely known, so the scientific studies presented here reveal valuable insights into this period."