Gruppo 63

Gruppo 63, avant-garde Italian literary movement of the 1960s. It was composed of Italian intellectuals who shared the desire for a radical break from the conformity present in traditional Italian society.

The group was organized at a 1963 meeting in Palermo. Edoardo Sanguineti, Elio Pagliarani, Nanni Balestrini, Antonio Porta, Renato Barilli, Luciano Anceschi, Giorgio Manganelli, and Umberto Eco were among its founders.

With the goal of a radical renewal of the substance and form of literary language, Gruppo 63 challenged the values of contemporary society, particularly the consumerism that was spread through the mass media. They expressly criticized the education and communication channels of middle-class and capitalist society, and they proposed a new approach to understanding and interpreting the industrialized society they rejected. They proposed aesthetic values extolling “l’immaginazione al potere,” meaning the primacy of the imagination.

The group organized annual meetings at which they held debates and readings of new works, and in June 1967 they began to publish Quindici, a monthly journal that presented the members’ theoretical and literary works. Publication of the periodical continued until August 1969, when social strife—in particular, the group’s response to the development of the student protest movement—brought dissension and the breakup of the group. Some members of the group continued their literary ventures individually; others took a more active role in popular political activities.