Arte Povera

Presentation

Arte Povera is a “attitude” (rather than a movement, term that the artists of Arte Povera reject) preached by Italian artists since 1967. The artists of Arte Povera adopt a behavior which consists in defying the culture industry and more largely the consumer society, according to a strategy thought on the model of the Guérilla.

This refusal of the identification appears by an artistic activity which privileges it also the process, in other words the creative gesture with the detriment of the finished object. Process which consists principalemant to return meaning unimportant objects (celebrates such for example it basin of W. - C. immortalized by Marcel Duchamp under the title of Fontaine ).

Arte Povera uses poor produced (from where its name): sand, rag, ground, wood, tar, cord, hessian, clothing used, etc and positions them like artistic elements of the compositions.

By condemning as well the identity as the object, Arte Povera claims to resist any attempt at appropriation. It is an art which wants to be fundamentally wandering, imperceptible.

History

The expression Arte Povera is used for the first time in September 1967 by Germano Concealing to entitle an exposure presented to Genoa. It borrows the “poor” term from an experimental theatrical practice; it is necessary here to include/understand this poverty like a voluntary detachment of the assets of the culture.

In 1972 Concealing Germano gives up the term which he regards from now on as “a repetitive stereotype” and which had been selected according to him “because he wants nothing to say”. However in 1984 and 1985, Germano Concealing the fact of re-appearing during various exposures which will confirm the historical range of Arte Povera and which will fix definitively at 12 the number of the artists stamps Arte Povera (Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero E Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gilberto Zorio).

The texts founders of G. Concealing in the Sixties are hardly explicit on the conceptual or plastic orientation of the group.

Materials " pauvres" ?

One often suggested that it was a question of using poor materials, like objects of rebus or natural elements. But of many works refute this interpretation by integrating matters more sophisticated like neon. The frequent reference to nature is rather to regard as an example of fulcrum anti-history from which it is possible to criticize the present. Thus, the artists of Arte Povera take part fully in the reflection on the dialectical one between nature and the culture.

Spiritual or political dimension?

One also saw in the use of the word Pauvre a Christian reference to the asceticism and with the renouncement franciscain because one finds in works of Arte Povera a spiritual materialism, a revelation of the mystery of the existence in the objects more banals, unimportant, daily.

The term Pauvre was also interpreted in a political direction because the artists of Arte Povera adopted positions radical and marginal, close in mentality to the protest movements of 1968.

Standpoint

The actors of Arte Povera, refuse to let themselves lock up in a definition and reject the qualification of movement, to prefer that of attitude to him. To be an artist Arte Povera , it is to adopt a behavior which consists in defying the culture industry and more largely the consumer society, according to a strategy thought on the model of the guerilla.

In this direction, Arte Povera is an attitude socially committed on the revolutionary mode.

The refusal and the identification and the political standpoint appear by an artistic activity which privileges the creative process the gesture with the object itself.

The Arte Povera is an art which wants to be imperceptible, since it resists any attempt at appropriation by condemning the identity of the object. It takes part fully of the Utopia protestor of end of the year 60 and asserts with its manner a tendency of the Italian contemporary art vis-a-vis the supremacy of the market of American art.

Market of art

A long time, works of Arte will povera have escaped with the logic of the market. Indeed, refusing to regard the work of art as a produced , their authors did not hesitate to create transitory works, or they had recourse to famous materials “poor” like the ground, fabric, of the plants, etc Cependant the adventure turned short before the middle of the years 1970, number of the artists of the group adopting individual steps then.

Arte Povera is not an easy art of access: the conservation of certain parts requires an great attention; others, which are appeared as installations, can obviously take seat only in adapted interiors.

However, the great American institutions and the collectors start to be interested closely in this current after having a long time taken it of dimensioned.

Although related with the Conceptual art practiced in other countries - in the United States, it resulted in particular from pop experiments and minimalist, the happening and the cinema underground - the Arte Povera itself produced works of an indisputable individuality.

The first exposure Arte Povera in spazio of Arte Povera which took place with the gallery Bertesca, in Genoa, in 1967, many other demonstrations succeeded, both in Europe and in the United States.

Arte Povera through Giovanni Anselmo

Giovanni Anselmo is very discrete as for its course preceding its entry on the artistic scene. Since 1966, it carries out sculptures starting from natural materials as the stone, wood, iron, or of vegetable matters.

Anselmo repositions the matters to try to give again their original qualities to them: tension, energy, eternity, based on the laws of physics like gravity, gravity and on their possible transformations (granite and lettuce, rails of railroad and vegetable sponge for example).

In the Seventies, Anselmo replaces the matter by the word, which brings it closer, from the point of view of the means, of the Conceptual art. However, its matter is different since he does not wonder about the report/ratio of the linguistic sign to his referent.

Anselmo rather intends to express a tension between the virtual one and reality, such as for example in Infinito, 1971 when the artist “projects the word infinito on a wall on which it cannot be read; to read the writing infinito, it is necessary to go up to the point located ad infinitum”.

List artists

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