Arte Povera

Sacks, logs and earth: anti-industrialism at the Museum

Banality has entered the field of art. The insignificant is appearing, or rather is beginning to impose itself. Behavior and physical presence have become art.

Germano Celant, exhibition “Arte povera – Im Spazio”, 1967

Pino Pascali: “Trapola”, 1968. London, Tate Modern. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen, license CC-BY 2.5 ·· Mario Merz: “Igloo di pietra”, 1982 KMM sculpturepark, Netherlands.

After the end of World War II, and thanks in part to the economic injection from the Marshall Plan, Italy went through a period of economic growth known as the Italian Economic Miracle, which lasted until the early 1970s. Italian industry, badly damaged during the war, flourished again. The FIAT 500 and 600 were produced and purchased by the thousands, and Olivetti filled homes and offices with calculators and typewriters, even “proto-computers” like the Programma 101. This caused an emigration from rural areas to the industrial production zones located in the northern half of the country, which, in turn, led to a constructive boom in these areas. It could be said that, in the Italy of the 1960s, the most radical Futurist utopias about the triumph of industrial society were close to being fulfilled.

In this context, Arte Povera (Poor Art) emerged as a critique of industrialization and the omnipresent technology, and -to a lesser extent- as a reaction to Minimalism, then at its peak. Arte Povera advocates the use of humble (poor) materials, forgotten by modern industry, from earth and wood to sacks and ropes, which degrade and transform with the passage of time; at the same time it seeks to recover the artisan working method.  Arte Povera “intones an elegy for a disappearing world, investigated with the interest of an archaeologist” (Museo Reina Sofía, “Espacios de vida: las políticas del arte povera“). In this sense, it is tempting to link (at least philosophically) the origin of Arte Povera with that of 19th century Romanticism, which also advocated a recovery of the past in the face of an Industrial Revolution still at its peak. However, if we are looking for antecedents, the clearest case is that of the Matterism (matter painting) of the 1950s, represented by artists such as Alberto Burri and Antoni Tàpies, who also used “povera” materials (earth, sacks) in their works, in which they intervened -to the point of partially destroying them- by burning or cutting the surfaces of the works.

The public presentation of Arte Povera took place at the exhibition “Arte povera – Im Spazio” in 1967, curated by the critic Germano Celant (1940-2020). In the first section of the exhibition, dedicated to Arte Povera, exhibited, among others, Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994), Luciano Fabro (1936-2007) and Jannis Kounellis (1936-2017). In the same year, Michelangelo Pistoletto (b.1933) presented his “Venere degli stracci” (Venus of the rags), whose popularity helped the spread of Arte Povera throughout Italy.

Although Arte Povera was an eminently Italian movement, it had, especially during the 1970s, a great acceptance in the United States. This success is attributable in particular to two figures. The first of these is the aforementioned Germano Celant, who published in several languages, including English, the manifesto “Arte Povera: Appunti per una guerriglia” (Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerrilla), which skillfully identified the movement with revolution and radicalism, at a time when the Vietnam War and the 1968 protests had provided an ideal breeding ground for these ideas. In this sense, “Celant’s metaphorical guerrilla war was also appropriated by dissenting university students, who identified themselves with political heroes such as Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara and espoused the guerrilla tactics of General Nguyen Giap, predicting, ‘The university will be our Vietnam’.” (Nicholas Cullinan: “From Vietnam to Fiat-nam: The Politics of Arte Povera”, 2008). The second great figure was gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend (1914-2007), who exhibited the works of Arte Povera artists in her gallery in New York’s Soho, opened in 1971, giving a home and promotion to Celant’s “guerrillas“.

G. Fernández · theartwolf.com