View source for Arte Povera

{{Short description|Italian art movement}}
{{More citations needed|date=April 2013}}
{{Infobox art movement
| name         = Arte Povera
| image        = KMM Merz 01.JPG
| alt          =
| caption      = Igloo by Mario Merz, an example of Arte Povera
| yearsactive  = 1967–1980s
| country      = Italy
| majorfigures = [[Jannis Kounellis]], [[Mario Merz]], [[Michelangelo Pistoletto]]
| influences   =
| influenced   =
}}
'''Arte Povera''' ({{IPA|it|ˈarte ˈpɔːvera|lang}}; literally "poor art") was an [[art movement]] that took place between the end of the 1960s and 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<ref name="veconomist" >{{cite news|author=J.U-S.|title=Arte Povera's radical simplicity|url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/10/post-war-art|work=[[The Economist]]|date=3 October 2017}}</ref> and introduced in [[Italy]] during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a [[Political radicalism|radical]] stance.<ref name=MOMA>{{cite web|title=Arte Povera|url=http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10454|work=MoMA: The Collection|access-date=May 13, 2013}}</ref> 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 von Stein|Margherita Stein]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Storia|url=http://www.galleriachristianstein.com/Storia.html|access-date=2021-12-03|website=www.galleriachristianstein.com|archive-date=2022-01-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220120193056/http://www.galleriachristianstein.com/Storia.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> The exhibition "IM Spazio" (The Space of Thoughts), curated by Celant and held at the Galleria La Bertesca in Genoa, Italy, from September through October 1967, is often considered to be the official starting point of Arte Povera.<ref name=MOMA /> Celant, who became one of Arte Povera's major proponents, organized two exhibitions in 1967 and 1968, followed by an influential book published by Electa in 1985 called ''Arte Povera Storie e protagonisti/Arte Povera. Histories and Protagonists'', 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. Key figures closely associated with the movement are [[Giovanni Anselmo]], [[Alighiero Boetti]], [[Enrico Castellani]], [[Pier Paolo Calzolari]], [[Luciano Fabro]], [[Jannis Kounellis]], [[Mario Merz]], [[Marisa Merz]], [[Giulio Paolini]], [[Pino Pascali]], [[Giuseppe Penone]],  [[Michelangelo Pistoletto]], [[Emilio Prini]], and [[Gilberto Zorio]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Christov-Bakargiev|first=Carolyn|title=Arte Povera|year=2005|publisher=Phaidon|isbn=0-7148-4556-6|pages=17}}</ref>  They often used [[found object]]s 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.<ref name="veconomist" />

==Trends and concepts==
{{unreferenced section|date=April 2014}}
* A return to simple objects and messages
* The body and behavior are art
* The everyday becomes meaningful
* Traces of nature and industry appear
* Dynamism and energy are embodied in the work
* Nature can be documented in its physical and chemical transformation
* Explore the notion of space and language
* Complex and symbolic signs lose meaning
* Ground Zero, no culture, no art system, Art = Life

=== Materials and techniques ===
Arte Povera artists made extensive use of everyday and "poor" materials, alongside industrial matter and organic or perishable substances. Processes such as gravity, chemical reactions, heat and cold, and environmental exposure were often integral to the work, allowing pieces to evolve, decay, or be renewed in situ.<ref name="TateTerm">{{cite web |title=Arte Povera – Art Term |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/arte-povera |website=Tate |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref><ref name="Zero2001">{{cite book |last=Flood |first=Richard |author2=Frances Morris |title=Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962–1972 |location=London and Minneapolis |publisher=Tate Publishing; Walker Art Center |year=2001 |isbn=9781854374011}}</ref>

==== 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.<ref name="GuggenheimAnselmo">{{cite web |title=Giovanni Anselmo. Beyond the Horizon – Press Dossier |url=https://cms.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/uploads/2024/02/Dosier-Giovanni-Anselmo_EN.pdf |website=Guggenheim Museum Bilbao |date=9 February 2024 |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref> [[Jannis Kounellis]] introduced live animals and raw materials into the gallery, notably twelve live horses at Galleria L'Attico (Rome, 1969).<ref name="TateKit2001">{{cite web |title=From Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962–1972 – Teachers' Kit |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/documents/234/artepoveracards.pdf |website=Tate Modern |date=2001 |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref> [[Giuseppe Penone]]'s practice centres on trees, growth, respiration, and bodily imprint, treating vegetal time as sculptural form.<ref name="TatePenone">{{cite web |title=Giuseppe Penone |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/giuseppe-penone-1754 |website=Tate |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref>

==== 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.<ref name="TatePistoletto">{{cite web |title=Michelangelo Pistoletto |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/michelangelo-pistoletto-8669 |website=Tate |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref> [[Mario Merz]] developed igloos that combine metal armatures, glass, earth, or bags of clay soil with neon numbers or texts.<ref name="TateMerzIgloo">{{cite web |title='Igloo, Do We Go Around Houses, or Do Houses Go Around Us?' |url=https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/merz-igloo-do-we-go-around-houses-or-do-houses-go-around-us-t05755 |website=Tate |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref><ref name="HangarMerz">{{cite web |title=Mario Merz – Igloos |url=https://pirellihangarbicocca.org/en/exhibition/mario-merz-igloos/ |website=Pirelli HangarBicocca |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref> [[Pier Paolo Calzolari]] employed refrigeration units, lead, salt, neon, and frost to stage states of matter and delicate thresholds of temperature.<ref name="GuggCalzolari">{{cite web |title=Description of ''Untitled (Black & Black)'' |url=https://www.guggenheim.org/audio/track/description-of-untitled-black-black-2021 |website=Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum |date=23 April 2024 |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref><ref name="RivoliCalzolari">{{cite web |title=Pier Paolo Calzolari – Artist Page |url=https://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/artista/pier-paolo-calzolari/ |website=Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea |access-date=6 September 2025}}</ref>

==== 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.<ref name="Szeemann1969">{{cite book |last=Szeemann |first=Harald |title=Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form: Works–Concepts–Processes–Situations–Information |location=Bern and London |publisher=Kunsthalle Bern; Institute of Contemporary Arts |year=1969}}</ref><ref name="Zero2001" />

===== Oxidation and patination =====
Within Arte Povera, oxidation—rust, verdigris, and related patinas—was used both as a visual index of time and as a material process incorporated into the work. [[Germano Celant]] described how artists such as [[Jannis Kounellis]] and [[Giovanni Anselmo]] foregrounded material change and "poor" matter to challenge industrial polish and permanence.<ref name="Celant1989">{{cite book |last=Celant |first=Germano |title=Arte Povera |location=Turin |publisher=Allemandi |year=1989 |isbn=9788842202066}}</ref> 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.<ref name="DeMeredieu1994">{{cite book |last=de Meredieu |first=Florence |title=Histoire matérielle et immatérielle de l'art moderne |location=Paris |publisher=Bordas |year=1994 |isbn=2035050049}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Pincus1977">{{cite book |last=Pincus-Witten |first=Robert |title=Postminimalism |location=London |publisher=London Press |year=1977 |isbn=9780714809762}}</ref>

==== 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.<ref name="Zero2001" /><ref name="TateKit2001" />

==== Selected examples (materials and processes) ====
* [[Giovanni Anselmo]], ''Untitled (Sculpture That Eats)'', 1968 – granite, copper wire, lettuce (biological decay as structure).<ref name="GuggenheimAnselmo" />
* [[Jannis Kounellis]], ''Untitled (12 Horses)'', 1969 – twelve live horses in a gallery (life processes within exhibition).<ref name="TateKit2001" />
* [[Mario Merz]], igloos, 1968– – metal armatures, glass, earth, neon (shelter and energy).<ref name="TateMerzIgloo" /><ref name="HangarMerz" />
* [[Michelangelo Pistoletto]], ''Mirror Paintings'', 1962– – polished steel supports reflecting viewers and surroundings (image and environment).<ref name="TatePistoletto" />
* [[Pier Paolo Calzolari]], works with frost, lead, salt, refrigeration, and neon (states of matter and thresholds).<ref name="GuggCalzolari" /><ref name="RivoliCalzolari" />
* [[Giuseppe Penone]], tree works and breath pieces – vegetal growth, bodily imprint, and environmental time.<ref name="TatePenone" />

==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 1960s 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 {{lang|it|Muretto di Stracci}} (''Rag Wall''), Pistoletto makes an exotic and opulent tapestry wrapping common bricks in discarded scraps of fabric.

[[Jannis Kounellis]] and [[Mario Merz]] attempted to make the experience of art more immediately real while also more closely connecting the individual to nature. In his ''(Untitled /Twelve Horses)'', Kounellis brings the real, natural life into the gallery setting, by showing twelve horses racked-up on the gallery walls. Recalling the [[Dada]] movement and [[Marcel Duchamp]], his aim was to challenge what could be defined as art, but unlike Duchamp, maintains the objects real and alive, redefining the notion of life and art, while keeping both entities independent.{{Quote | text=The 'reality effect' is not secondary but constitutive. (...) Kounellis shifts the frontier of what can be defined as art, but there is never the idea that art should be dissolved into life. On the contrary, art is given a new message as a rite of initiation through which to re-experience life.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lumley|first=Robert|title=Movements in Modern Art, Povera Arte|year=2004|publisher=Tate|location=London}}</ref>}} [[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==
{{Div col|colwidth=22em}}
* [[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]]
{{div col end}}

==See also==
* [[Jerzy Grotowski]]
* [[Nnenna Okore]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
* Celant, Germano, ''Arte Povera: Histories and Protagonists'', Milan: Electa, 1985. {{ISBN|88-435-1043-6}} (Republished as ''Arte Povera: History and Stories'', 2011. {{ISBN|978-88-370-7542-2}})
* Celant, Germano, Tommaso Trini, [[Jean-Christophe Ammann]], Harald Szeemann and Ida Gianelli. ''Arte povera'', Milan: Charta, 2001. {{ISBN|978-88-8158-316-4}}
* Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn (Ed.). ''Arte Povera''. London: [[Phaidon Press|Phaidon]], 1999. {{ISBN|0-7148-3413-0}}
* Flood, Richard, and Morris, Frances. ''Zero to infinity: Arte povera 1962-1972''. London: [[Tate Publishing Ltd|Tate Publishing]], 2001. {{ISBN|978-0-935640-69-4}}
* Lista, Giovanni, ''L'Arte Povera'', Cinq Continents Éditions, Milan-Paris, 2006. {{ISBN|978-88-7439-205-6}}
* Lumley, Robert. ''Arte Povera''. London: Tate Pub.; New York: Distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams, 2004. {{ISBN|1-85437-588-1}}, {{ISBN|978-1-85437-588-9}}
* Jacopo Galimberti, "A Third-worldist Art? Germano Celant's Invention of Arte Povera", volume 36, issue 2, Art History, 2013, 418-441.  {{ISSN|1467-8365}}.
* Manacorda, Francesco, and Robert Lumley, ''Marcello Levi: Portrait of a Collector'', Turin: Hopefulmonster, 2005 Estorick Collection. London. {{ISBN|88-7757-195-0}}.

==External links==
* [http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/arte-povera.html Arte Povera at Artcyclopedia]
* [https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/arte-povera Tate Collection glossary]
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101211213343/http://www.artdesigncafe.com/Arte-Povera-1992|date=11 December 2010|title="Arte Povera" in ''Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945'', 3rd edition, via art design café}}
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041022093025/http://www.walkerart.org/archive/5/AD73F90F341B63316165.htm|date=22 October 2004|title="Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972" (Walker Art Museum exhibit, 2001-2002)}}
* {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090619023100/http://www.studio-international.co.uk/reports/arte_povera.asp|date=19 June 2009|title=Studio International magazine review of Arte Povera exhibit}}

{{Arte Povera}}
{{Western art movements}}

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[[Category:Arte Povera| ]]
[[Category:1967 neologisms]]
[[Category:1960s in art]]
[[Category:1970s in art]]
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[[Category:1970s in Italy]]
[[Category:20th-century art movements]]
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[[Category:Italian art movements]]
[[Category:Italian contemporary art]]
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