The publication opens with two essays, La tua assenza ci circonda by Mario Codognato and the Introduction by Francesco Guzzetti, which define the critical framework of the entire volume. La tua assenza ci circonda portrays a visionary and courageous Ileana Sonnabend, capable of embracing and promoting the most radical languages, from Pop Art to Minimalism. With a blend of personal memory and cultural history, Mario Codognato evokes the experimental climate in which artists such as Rauschenberg, Johns, Gilbert & George, Kounellis, Acconci, and Koons worked, presenting the gallery as a place of freedom and research. In the Introduction, Francesco Guzzetti clearly reconstructs Ileana Sonnabend’s biographical and professional story: from her European origins to her escape to the United States, from her partnership with Leo Castelli to her activity between Paris and New York. Thanks also to the testimonies of Antonio Homem, the portrait that emerges is that of a decisive mediator between the American and European art scenes and a key figure in the processes that defined the market and new artistic languages of the late twentieth century.

Through eleven sections, the volume retraces the exhibition itinerary that follows Sonnabend’s visionary path and interests: from the iconic masterpieces of American art by artists such as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Robert Rauschenberg; to the seminal works of Pop Art, with artists such as Jim Dine, James Rosenquist, and Tom Wesselmann; to contemporary research in Italy by artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mario Schifano. This extraordinary journey continues with landmark works from the art movements of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Minimalism with Donald Judd and Robert Morris and its revolutionary developments in sculpture with Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra, as well as Arte Povera, which Sonnabend was the first to exhibit in New York, with outstanding artists such as Giovanni Anselmo, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, and Gilberto Zorio. Sonnabend’s strong interest in developments in photography and performance is also demonstrated by collaborations with artists from different generations, from Bernd & Hilla Becher to Luigi Ontani, from Vito Acconci to Gilbert & George, from Candida Höfer to Matthias Schaller. German painting of the 1980s with Jörg Immendorff, Anselm Kiefer, and A.R. Penck, together with contemporaneous American research by Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach, seals this exceptional itinerary.