While the Italian artist Emilio Vedova extended his format with a violent and explosive triptych coloured with energetic paintbrush bursts, his compatriot Alberto Burri used jute cloth with bright red acrylic and salvaged materials to create Umbria Vera, a sort of “abstract metaphor of the wounds of body and soul”. In another register, the Spaniard Manuel Rivera stretches wire and mesh across his work Estructura espacial, while César doesn’t hesitate to rip paper, staple wood or compress sheet metal, varying his materials and techniques.

The American Salvatore Scarpitta ripped and tore the canvas, which he stretched on both sides of his composition to form his Trapped Canvas, while the Italian Lucio Fontana pierced his canvas with holes, combining them with salvaged objects such as glass glued directly onto the canvas. Aiming to abolish colour, the artist Piero Manzoni created his series of Achromes, gathering white pieces in varied materials (cotton, plaster, canvas), with the surface folded, creased or pierced. For other artists – such as certain New Realists – the work directly confronted the real world: this was the case for Raymond Hains whose torn posters or the sheet metal supports on which they were initially glued became urban paintings in their own right, witnesses to their social and political context.