Arte Povera

After the Second World War the city of Turin was transformed into an industrial centre when a number of big companies settled there. The economic boom attracted large numbers of workers from all over the country, an immigrant population that gradually settled in the suburbs, bringing about a change in the urban and social landscape and becoming more and more relevant for public life. The politicisation of everyday life, particularly notable in the second half of the sixties, was to be seen in the importance of the Communist Party, student unrest, demonstrations and strikes and the formation of creation of politically committed groups who were even in favour of armed struggle.

In that context, some artists set out to examine – from a critical perspective – their own attitude in industrialised society and questioned the models laid down by tradition and the past. Among them were some young artists who, even though they never structured themselves as a movement, were brought together by Germano Celant under the name povera, a term taken from Grotowski’s theatrical concepts, which appeared for the first time in the text for the exhibition Arte povera - Im Spazio (1967). Celant defined arte povera as an art which made sensory perceptions material and rejected the hierarchies of techniques and materials. He also attributed to artists the role of "guerrilla warrior", since their work was a social gesture, a compositional liberation which aimed at identification between human being and the world. Along these lines, in 12 forme dal giugno ’67 (1967-1971) Alighiero & Boetti shows the provisional nature of territory by presenting a cartography of the various political and military conflicts which were taking place in different parts of the world between 1967 and 1971, with the reference to the date of publication of news on them in the Turin newspaper La Stampa. And Michelangelo Pistoletto uses the world as an object to be manipulated in Mappamondo (Ogetti in meno) (1966-1968).

Michelangelo Pistoletto: http://www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/index_e.html