Arte povera

Résumé : It was in 1967 that Italian art critic Germano Celant coined the term Arte Povera (poor art) to describe the work of a generation of young Italian artists. Emerging alongside such international movements as Land Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art, Arte Povera used simple, "poor" gestures and materials - twigs, metals, glass, fabric, stone, even live animals - to turn away from traditional "high" art. They explored the relation between art and life as it is made manifest in natural processes or cultural dynamics. First exhibiting together in Italy in the late 1960s, artists Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio went on to become internationally renowned. Bridging the natural and the artificial, the urban and the rural, Mediterranean life and Western modernity, Arte Povera's impact still resounds.

Résumé : In 1967 the Italian art critic Garmano Celant coined the term Arte Povera to describe the work of a generation of young Italian artists who used a simple "poverty" of gestures and materials to explore the relation between art and life. The work of the Arte Povera artists - Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulo Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio - continues to be a major influence on contemporary international art. Art Povera bridges the natural and the artificial, the urban and the rural, local tradition and global modernity. Critic and curator Carolyn Christiv-Bakargiev is one of the world's leading authorities on post-war Italian art and culture. She collaborated directly with many of the artists in the making of this book, which is the most comprehensive survey available.