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Arte Povera: Dialogues.

Arte Povera was a radical Italian art movement which attempted to create a new sculptural language through the use of humble, everyday materials. Meaning “poor art,” the term was introduced in 1967 by Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant to describe the work by these artists. In them, Celant found a shared revolutionary spirit inextricably linked to the increasingly radical political atmosphere in Italy at the time. By using non-precious and impermanent materials such as soil, rags, and twigs, Arte Povera artists sought to challenge and disrupt the commercialization of art. Leading artists were Giovanni AnselmoAlighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo CalzolariLuciano Fabro, Piero GilardiJannis Kounellis, Mario MerzMarisa MerzGiulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, and Gilberto Zorio.

Gilberto Zorio’s works are vast fields of both physical and mental energy. A key figure in the Arte Povera movement, since 1966 Zorio has focused his exploration on the processes that render each artwork continuously evolving. By initiating chemical or physical reactions, the artist places his works into a life cycle, observing them as a spectator. Time often plays a crucial role, as only the natural passage of hours and days fully reveals the transformations the works undergo.

Gilberto Zorio, 1944
Stella, 1976
Parchment on synthetic rubber on masonite
70 x 100 cm - - 27 1/2 x 39 3/8 in

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1933. He began to exhibit his work in 1955 and in 1960 he had his first solo show at Galleria Galatea in Turin. An inquiry into self-portraiture characterises his early work. In the two-year period 1961-1962, Pistoletto made the first Mirror Paintings, which directly include the viewer and real time in the work, and opened up perspective, reversing the Renaissance perspective that had been closed by the twentieth-century avant-garde. These works quickly brought Pistoletto international acclaim, leading, in the sixties, to solo exhibitions in important galleries and museums in Europe and the United States.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1933
Il telefono, 1970
Coloured Silkscreen On Stainless Steel
70 x 100 cm - - 27 1/2 x 39 3/8 in
Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1933
Cabina Telefonica, 2007
Silkscreen on polished stainless steel
250 x 250 cm -98 3/8 x 98 3/8 in

The Mirror Paintings are the foundation of his subsequent artistic output and theoretical thought.
In 1965 and 1966 he produced a set of works entitled Minus Objects, considered fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera, of which Pistoletto was an animating force and a protagonist. In 1967, he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades by bringing together artists from different disciplines and diverse sectors of society.

Giulio Paolini, 1940
Untitled, 1985
Pencil and collage on paper
70 x 100 cm - 27 1/2 x 39 3/8 in

Born in Genoa on 5 November 1940, Giulio Paolini lives in Turin.
Since he first participated in a group exhibition in 1961 and since his first solo show in 1964, he has held countless exhibitions at galleries and museums worldwide. Mayor retrospectives were organised by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1980), the Nouveau Musée in Villeurbanne (1984), the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1986), the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome (1988), the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz (1998), and the Fondazione Prada in Milan (2003). The most recent anthological exhibitions were held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (2014), Fondazione Carriero in Milan (2018), and Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rivoli, Turin (2020).

Giulio Paolini, (b.1940)
L'altra figura (The Other Figure) (1983)
Two whole and one fractured plaster casts, white plinths.
Each bust: 45 x 23 x 23 cm Each plinth: 120 x 40 x 40 cm.

Paolini’s artistic production constitutes an in-depth exploration of the creative process in art. Artwork exists in a pre-existing dimension, albeit in a platonic way, with respect to the artist who made it tangible, inviting the viewer to create his or her own interpretation.
The work L’altra figura (The Other Figure) (1983) consists of two plaster casts of the Roman marble copy of the head of Phidias’ Athena Lemnia, one of three bronze statues in the Acropolis of Athens honoring the goddess of wisdom Athena.
While conveying an apparent calm, the two busts seem to question whether those fragments are part of them, whilst reflecting on the irretrievability of the past. The aura of mystery and the allusion to absence evoke themes of melancholy and nostalgia for the classical past, the cast, echoing an absent model and a distant, mythical image, serves as a privileged tool for Paolini.

Jannis Kounellis, 1936 - 2017
Untitled, 2000
Iron and jute rugs
103 x 70 x 42 cm - - 40 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 16 1/2 in

Born in Greece and active in Italy since the late 1950s, Jannis Kounellis has developed the notions of space and form based on his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and his interactions with the great masters of Italian painting, from Giotto to Masaccio to Caravaggio. Through the use of raw, natural, and synthetic materials such as metal plates, bed frames, doors, shelves, cotton, wool, wax, iron, lead, wood, and coal—either structured or placed on shelves, along with the incorporation of plant and animal elements—he has centered his research on breaking the linguistic conventions of art, aligning with the practices of Arte Povera. By using fire, he has enriched his work with anthropological and philosophical references, leading to an original reflection on the concepts of history and memory.

Jannis Kounellis, 1936 - 2017
Untitled (JJ), 1961
Paint on paper
71 x 100 cm - - 28 x 39 3/8 in

Alighiero Boetti began exhibiting his work in the mid-1960s, during a period of experimentation in Italy that would redefine the artistic process. Though originally part of the Arte Povera movement, Boetti pursued an independent path, highlighting the gap between concept and execution in his work. Central to his practice was the intellectual aspect of art-making, as he explored logical systems and abstract ideas, constantly creating new ways to understand and perceive the world.

Alighiero Boetti, 1940 - 1994
Aerei, 1978
Ballpoint blue pen on paper
36.4 x 81.3 cm - - 14 3/8 x 32 1/8 in
Alighiero Boetti, 1940 - 1994
Un pozzo senza fine, 1991
Embroidery
24 x 24 cm

Alighiero Boetti’s (1940 – 1994) exploration of language takes form in his embroidered works, conveying puzzles with short phrases, inverted sayings, and wordplay, conceived in the 1970s. An example of a later embroidered work is Un pozzo senza fine (1991).

Dialogues

Salvo, 1947-2015
La tartaruga e l'aquila , 1972
Marble gravestone
45 x 65 cm - 17 3/4 x 25 5/8 in

At the end of the 60s, Salvo began his involvement with American conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, and Sol Lewitt. Following this, his work began to display key characteristics that would later become essential to his research, engaging with the search for Self, narcissistic self-satisfaction, and the relationship with the past and the history of culture. These themes were evident in the 1970s, with his 12 Autoritratti series, which consisted of Salvo creating photomontages where he applied his face to images taken from newspapers.

 

Simultaneously, Salvo produced marble tombstones on which he engraved words or phrases, such as Idiota and Respirare il padre. It is, however, important to note, that despite those works belong being created within the context of Arte Povera, their monumental and archaizing connotations move beyond the movement, revealing a unique viewpoint, foreshadowing what we are to see in his future works.

Salvo, 1947-2015
L'uomo che spaccò la statua del dio, 1972
Marble gravestone
45 x 65 cm - 17 3/4 x 25 5/8 in

Combining a minimalist aesthetic with analytical approaches of a conceptual nature, Gianni Piacentino (Coazze, Turin, 1945) began a research project in the mid-1960s that intersects with those of the protagonists of Arte Povera, with whom he participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Arte povera più azioni povere in Amalfi in 1968.

 

 

Gianni Piacentino, 1945
Decorated Bar with Striped Wings, Propeller Plate, Initials, I, 1979
Nitro-acrylic enamel on aluminum, painted and silver-plated bronze and brass
9 x 170 x 4.3 cm - 3 1/2 x 66 7/8 x 1 3/4 in

Following the Arte abitabile exhibition in 1966 at the Sperone Gallery in Turin, Piacentino shares with Piero Gilardi and Michelangelo Pistoletto the idea of art that concretely enters the environment. In this context, he creates essential structures that evoke everyday objects stripped of weight and volume.

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