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Category :Art Events |
Written by: Elena Lanzanova
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The Mart’S Arte Povera In The Setting Of Villa Panza
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Wednesday 13 January 2010
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Until 28th March 2010 the suggestive setting of Villa Panza in Varese is hosting the exhibition Arte Povera: energy and metamorphosis of materials, realised thanks to the collaboration between Villa Panza and Collection and the Mart, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto.
An exhibition of more than 20 works, belonging to the museum of Trento, displayed not in chronological or thematic order, but according to an arrangement where the installations dialogue with each other in a play of subtle visual correspondences, chromatic variations and surprising reversals of styles.
The event stirs great emotions and allows the Italian public to investigate an artistic movement that was essential for the country. “Arte Povera is a very important movement but it is underrated in Italy”, claims Marco Magnifico, director of the Fai (Fund for the Italian Environment).“In the United States it is considered so significant that it is called “Arte Povera” without a translation (as in Italy we call their “Pop Art”), while we are convinced that Italian Art ended with Futurism. On the contrary, I believe that this movement of the Sixties is by all means one of the most important avant-garde currents of the Twentieth century”.
The expression “Arte Povera” appeared in the Sixties to define the typical tendency of some Italian but also foreign artists, to broaden the field of expressive languages, adopting unusual materials that could be natural and organic or of industrial manufacturing, used in their primary and immediate form, often proposed under the form of installations.
The everyday materials of the works are opposed to the “rich” ones of the consumer society, chosen in the same years by the masters of Pop Art. Arte Povera is based only partly on critical positions: it is instead animated by the desire to rediscover man’s primary values, such as the sense of the earth, of nature, of pure energy, of history. There is also a wish to analyse the relation between subject and reality, dominated by the mechanisms of modern society, going against the conception of uniqueness and unrepeatability of the artistic product and hoping for a fusion between art and life.
To summarise better all this we need to refer to the art critic Germano Celant, first and main theorist of this movement who, drawing inspiration from the Poor Theatre of Jerzy Grotowski, stated that Arte Povera essentially consists “in reducing to minimal terms, in impoverishing signs, to take them back to their archetypes”.
The marvellous rooms and Stables of Villa Panza house the installations of the most important artists who adhered to the poetics of this movement, such as Alighiero Boetti, Anselmo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gilberto Zorio.
On view there are exemplary installations such as those composed with recycled wood, iron and coal by Jannis Kounellis (Untitled 1989 and Untitled 1991), from which we can infer the tension of the relation between shapes, rhythm and the transformation of matter. Whereas the igloos made of sticks, glass and neon by Mario Merz recall primordial archetypes (Chiaro Oscuro, 1983).
On view also various works by Michelangelo Pistoletto, including Orchestra di stracci dated 1968 and Self-portrait dated 1962, but also a famous embroidered tapestry dated from 1989 by Alighiero Boetti, entitled Avere fame di vento.
In the creations presented at Villa Panza natural elements and industrial materials are freely combined and placed next to each other to create unseen meaningful relations like in Stella per purificare le parole by Gilberto Zorio, Lo spazio della scultura by Giuseppe Penone and Entrare nell’opera by Giovanni Anselmo.
Thanks to the curatorial work of Gabriella Belli, director of the Mart, and of Anna Bernardini, person in charge of the scientific and organisational aspects of Fai Villa Panza and Collection, the exhibition does not follow a chronological nor a thematic order, but it makes the works dialogue with each other in the rooms where they are “hosted”. In this sense the two plaster casts by Giulio Paolini, Intervallo (Lottatori) dated 1985, seem to “amalgamate” perfectly with the delicacy of the monochromes by Ruth Ann Fredenthal, works belonging to the permanent collection of the Villa.
Until 28th March 2010
ARTE POVERA: ENERGY AND METAMORPHOSIS OF MATERIALS
FAI – Villa Panza and Collection
Piazza Litta 1 – Varese
Tel. 0332/283960
Email: faibiumo@fondoambiente.it
Web: www.fondoambiente.it
Opening times: every day from 10.00 am to 6.00 pm
Entrance: Full 10 euros; Reduced 5 euros.
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