In line with other contemporary European and American movements of the late 1970s and 1980s, the Italian movement Arte Cifra is classified as Neo-Expressionism. This art movement reacted to the inflationary spread of conceptual art, which found numerous media of expression by reviving painting and reintroducing emotions, symbols and the figurative mode of representation into art. Characteristic of Arte Cifra are emblem-like ciphers designed to translate great emotional tensions into succinct pictorial symbols.