Italian · 1935–2019
Nanni Balestrini (1935-2019) was an Italian poet, novelist, and visual artist, and one of the central figures of Italy's postwar literary avant-garde. Born in Milan, he co-founded the Gruppo 63 movement and appeared in the landmark 1961 anthology I Novissimi, which set the direction for Italian experimental poetry for a decade. His 1966 novel Tristano, later realized in full with the aid of digital printing, generated a unique paragraph order for every physical copy, making it one of literature's earliest algorithmically produced texts. Balestrini was also a committed political writer: his novel Vogliamo tutto (We Want Everything, 1971) chronicled the Fiat factory strikes of 1969, and his sympathy for the Autonomia Operaia movement forced him into exile in France and Germany for much of the 1980s. He continued writing prose, poetry, and criticism until his death in Rome in 2019.