Arte Povera (; literally "poor art") was an art movement that took place from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are Milan, Rome, Genoa, Venice, Naples and Bologna. The term was coined by Italian art critic Germano Celant in 1967, and 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.

Some of the first exhibitions of artists associated with Arte Povera were held at the Christian Stein Gallery in Turin, run by Margherita Stein. The exhibition "IM Spazio" (The Space of Thoughts), curated by Celant and held at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa from September to October 1967, is often considered to be the official starting point of Arte Povera. 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, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, and Lucio Fontana and Spatialism. Art dealer Ileana Sonnabend was a champion of the movement.

Organic and perishable materials

Several works mobilised living or degradable materials to foreground duration and contingency. Giovanni Anselmo's Untitled (Sculpture That Eats) (1968) compresses a head of lettuce between granite blocks with copper wire; as the lettuce wilts, the balance changes and the piece must be "fed" anew. Jannis Kounellis introduced live animals and raw materials into the gallery, notably twelve live horses at Galleria L'Attico (Rome, 1969). Giuseppe Penone's practice centres on trees, growth, respiration, and bodily imprint, treating vegetal time as sculptural form.

Industrial and everyday materials

Artists also reworked industrial matter and quotidian objects, often in deliberately unrefined ways. Michelangelo Pistoletto's Mirror Paintings integrate polished steel supports that reflect viewers and surroundings, collapsing image and environment. Mario Merz developed igloos that combine metal armatures, glass, earth, or bags of clay soil with neon numbers or texts. Pier Paolo Calzolari employed refrigeration units, lead, salt, neon, and frost to stage states of matter and delicate thresholds of temperature.

Process and time

Many Arte Povera works were conceived as open processes rather than fixed forms, aligning with a broader turn to process-based and post-minimal practices at the end of the 1960s. Exhibitions such as Harald Szeemann's Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969) foregrounded works built, altered, or staged on site, privileging concepts, actions, and changeability over permanence. Art historian Florence de Meredieu has analysed rust as both a bearer of memory and a transformative agent that confers individuality and historical resonance on materials. More broadly, critics associated oxidation and other natural processes with the post-minimal turn, in which materials were allowed to behave and alter over time.

Documentation and ephemerality

Because many works change or perish, exhibitions and publications frequently rely on photographic documentation, reconstructions, and artist instructions. Major surveys and catalogues such as Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962–1972 contextualised these strategies within the movement's historical development and curatorial reception. Piero Gilardi, much like the aim of Arte Povera itself, was concerned with bridging the natural and the artificial. In his (Nature Carpets), 1965, which gained him recognition and assimilation into the Arte Povera movement, Gilardi built three-dimensional carpets out of polyurethane which used "natural" leaves, rocks, and soil as decoration, design and art meshed together to question societal sensibilities towards what is real and natural and how artificiality was being engrained into the contemporary commercialized world.

List of artists

  • Giovanni Anselmo
  • Alighiero Boetti
  • Alberto Burri
  • Pier Paolo Calzolari
  • Enrico Castellani
  • Luciano Fabro
  • Piero Gilardi
  • Jannis Kounellis
  • Piero Manzoni
  • Mario Merz
  • Marisa Merz
  • Giulio Paolini
  • Pino Pascali
  • Giuseppe Penone
  • Gianni Piacentino
  • Michelangelo Pistoletto
  • Emilio Prini
  • Guillem Ramos-Poquí
  • Gilberto Zorio

See also

  • Jerzy Grotowski
  • Nnenna Okore

Notes

References

  • Celant, Germano, Arte Povera: Histories and Protagonists, Milan: Electa, 1985. (Republished as Arte Povera: History and Stories, 2011. )
  • Celant, Germano, Tommaso Trini, Jean-Christophe Ammann, Harald Szeemann and Ida Gianelli. Arte povera, Milan: Charta, 2001.
  • Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn (Ed.). Arte Povera. London: Phaidon, 1999.
  • Flood, Richard, and Morris, Frances. Zero to infinity: Arte povera 1962-1972. London: Tate Publishing, 2001.
  • Lista, Giovanni, L'Arte Povera, Cinq Continents Éditions, Milan-Paris, 2006.
  • Lumley, Robert. Arte Povera. London: Tate Pub.; New York: Distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams, 2004. ,
  • Jacopo Galimberti, "A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant's Invention of Arte Povera", volume 36, issue 2, Art History, 2013, 418–441. .
  • Manacorda, Francesco, and Robert Lumley, Marcello Levi: Portrait of a Collector, Turin: Hopefulmonster, 2005 Estorick Collection. London. .
  • Arte Povera at Artcyclopedia
  • Tate Collection glossary