Why should Luciano Fabro, a postwar Italian artist deeply attached to his national roots, be of interest to American audiences in 2018? Although he was associated with Arte Povera, Fabro described himself as “the heretic of the Arte Povera church.” This self-declared outsider position allowed him to develop a broad, open and collective sense of culture that extends beyond a single nation or time period.

I met Fabro, his wife Carla and his daughter Silvia thirty years ago while I was employed at the Christian Stein Gallery in Milan. I eventually went to work for him to help prepare for his first U.S. retrospective at the San Francisco MoMA. Fascinated by the recordings on answering machines, Fabro gave a talk in San Francisco titled “I Would Like to Leave a Message.” He read his words in Italian and I simultaneously translated them into English line by line. At one point, I accidentally read ahead of him by one line. Never missing a beat, Fabro stopped, looked up at the audience, and exclaimed: “Now THAT is what I call ‘avant-garde!’”