In the first publication dedicated to the work of Afro-American writer critic curator and
translator Henry Martin (Philadelphia US 1942-South Tyrol Italy 2022) Emanuele Guidi gathers
a selection of texts by Martin whose personal archive has been conserved by collector Egidio
Marzona and his Archiv der Avantgarden (Archive of the Avant-Gardes) in Dresden. The book is
conceived as research about Henry Martin's role in and contribution to the Italian European
and US cultural and artistic world through a selection of his published and unpublished
articles essays conversations and personal correspondences from 1965 until his recent
passing. The volume reconstructs the map of relationships and experiences in which Martin was
actively involved and that makes him a rare interlocutor with different radical artistic
movements across Europe and US including Fluxus Mail Art Concrete Poetry Arte Povera and
Conceptual Art. His lifelong friendship with a variety of artists and intellectuals his
practice as translator and his life choice of leaving the main centers to move permanently in
the Italian Alps in 1971 are discussed by newly commissioned contributions which help in
thinking Martin's life and work from a contemporary perspective at the intersection of ecology
and a sustainable working culture.
