48 pages Edited by Claudio Pescio 28,5 x 21 cm Language: Italian Paperback Publisher: Giunti 2014
A compact survey from the long-running Art e Dossier series, which for four decades has been the standard entry point into an artist or a movement for Italian readers. Dogheria's argument is that street art has a prehistory worth taking seriously: he opens with cave painting and Renaissance grottesche, moves through Mexican muralism and the counterculture press of the 1960s and 70s, and only then arrives at Haring, the writers, the stencillists, Banksy, Blu, Ericailcane and JR. The chapter titles carry the thesis — the mural caught between instrumentum regni and vox populi, then street art as arte della strada 2.0.
Forty-eight pages is not a lot, and the format imposes brevity, but this is the rare short introduction written by someone with an archivist's instincts rather than a publisher's checklist. The chronological table and the bibliography at the back are the practical payoff: it works as a reading list for anyone starting on the Italian scene. Useful too as a document of where the discourse stood in 2014, before the museum absorption of the following decade.
