Arte Povera

Arte Povera is a style of modern art. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether art as the private expression of the individual still had an ethical reason to exist. Italian art critic Germano Celant organized two exhibitions in 1967 and 1968, followed by an influential book called Arte Povera, promoting the notion of a revolutionary art, free of convention, the power of structure, and the market place. Although Celant attempted to encompass the radical elements of the entire international scene, the term properly centered on a group of Italian artists who attacked the corporate mentality with an art of unconventional materials and style. They often used found objects in their works. Other early exponents of radical change in the visual arts include proto Arte Povera artists: Antoni Tàpies and the Dau al Set movement, and Lucio Fontana and Spatialism.

The most wide-ranging public collection of works from the Arte Povera movement is at the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.

Artists

Michelangelo Pistoletto began painting on mirrors in 1962, connecting painting with the constantly changing realities in which the work finds itself. In the later sixties he began bringing together rags with casts of omnipresent classical statuary of Italy to break down the hierarchies of "art" and common things. An art of impoverished materials is certainly one aspect of the definition of Arte Povera. In his 1967 Muretto di straci (Rag Wall) Pistoletto makes an exotic and opulent tapestry wrapping common bricks in discarded scraps of fabric.

Artists such as Jannis Kounellis and Mario Merz attempted to make the experience of art more immediately real while also more closely connecting the individual to nature.

List of Artists

• Giovanni Anselmo
• Alighiero Boetti
• Pier-Paolo Calzolari
• Rossella Cosentino
• Luciano Fabro
• Lucio Fontana
• Piero Gilardi
• Jannis Kounellis
• Ondrej Mares
• Mario Merz
• Marisa Merz
• Pino Pascali
• Giuseppe Penone
• Michelangelo Pistoletto
• John Roloff
• Gilberto Zorio

References

• Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn (Ed.). Arte Povera. London: Phaidon, 1999. (ISBN 0714834130)
• Flood, Richard, and Morris, Frances. Zero to infinity: Arte povera 1962-1972. London: Tate Publishing, 2001. (ISBN 093564069X, ISBN 9780935640694, ISBN 185437401X, ISBN 9781854374011)
• Lumley, Robert. Arte Povera. London: Tate Pub.; New York: Distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams, 2004. (ISBN 1854375881, ISBN 9781854375889)

External links

• Fineberg, Jonathan, Art Since 1940 Strategies of Being
• Arte Povera at Artcyclopedia
• Walker Art Museum exhibit, 2001-2002