During that period, Manlio Bacosi explored the abstract and informal, yet the Umbrian landscape style of the aeropictorial season of Dottori influenced the young artist so much that he dedicated himself entirely to it for the rest of his life, being considered in every respect the successor of Umbrian landscape painting.
In Manlio Bacosi's works, the landscape undergoes a profound process of reduction and synthesis that leads the artist to represent a minimal world, indicated by a few signs on flat and uniform color layers in a two-dimensional space. In this context, the artist intervenes with a certain gestural nature that leads him to overlay even more mysterious and hermetic pictorial signs on this reality. Besides landscapes, among his favorite themes are also still lifes, of which he evolves the concept, applying it to subjects floating in colored voids or in simple, albeit elaborate, geometries.
Even the ceramics show new distinctive traits, works resulting from an intense creative activity that perceives color according to new, less sharp, more blurred forms.
In 1972, the city of Todi presented an Anthological exhibition in his honor at the Town Hall.
In 1975 in Recanati, on the occasion of the Leopardi events, Manlio Bacosi presented a large collection of his works in the municipal halls. Also in 1975, the city of Montecatini organized a solo exhibition of over 50 works. In December of the same year, the Municipality of Rome presented a large solo exhibition in the halls of Palazzo Braschi.
In March 1976, a retrospective exhibition of over 80 works took place at the Municipality of Perugia.
In 1979, he was awarded the International S. Valentino d'Oro Prize for Figurative Arts. In July of the same year, a retrospective exhibition at the San Marino museum was organized by the Municipality.
In May 1982, there was a major solo exhibition with 80 works at the Saloni della Molinella in Faenza under the patronage of the Municipality. Manlio Bacosi died in Perugia in 1998.