Gruppo N was born in 1959 in Padua as a free association called N. At the beginning of the 1960s, of the nine original members only five remained: Alberto Biasi, Ennio Chiggio, Toni Costa, Edoardo Landi, Manfredo Massironi. The programmatic physiognomy of the group took shape during the same year, above all with the theoretical contribution of Massironi and Biasi. In the Manifesto of Gruppo N, Padua, September 1961, we read: The term enne distinguishes a group of "experimental designers" united by the need to research collectively. The group is certain that rationalism and tachism are over, that the informal and all expressionism are useless subjectivisms. They are the exponents (together with the T Group in Italy of kinetic art, art partly linked to psychological observations, including experiments using "perceptive tricks", where the movement is given by the movement of the spectator and "objects that allow themselves to move ” or rather, which acquire particular characteristics, thanks to an external intervention, the N group dissolves, not so much for ideological reasons, but for problems concerning the need and at the same time the complexity and difficulty of research. collectively.
