Mario Nigro (1917–1992) is an anomaly in Italian art. Isolated from the time he began working (around 1950) until the late ’80s, he was rediscovered just when his type of abstraction seemed absolutely out of fashion—then later hailed as a master by a new crop of artists, who painted differently than he did (if they painted at all). How does this sort of transference occur? How, exactly, do young artists empathize with work so far removed in time and style?

Nigro’s painting comes out of classic geometric abstraction, out of the optimistic, international climate (in the period after World War