Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Giuseppe Penone, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Gilberto Zorio / “Arte Povera” in Moscow. Works from the collection of the Castello di Rivoli

Curators: Elena Geuna, Beatrice Merz

MOSCOW GOVERNMENT

MOSCOW CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE

MULTIMEDIA ART MUSEUM, MOSCOW/

MOSCOW HOUSE OF PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUM

CASTELLO DI RIVOLI MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

The exhibition ’Arte Povera in Moscow. Works from the Collection of the Castello di Rivoli’ is presented by the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, as part of the Russia-Italy year of cultural exchanges. On show are some 30 works by prominent Italian artists from the second half of the 20th century.

Created more than 25 years ago as the first state museum of contemporary art in Italy, the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art is rightfully proud of its collection of Italian art from the second half of the 20th century, a collection for which the museum is particularly renowned in the international cultural panorama. In its turn, the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, is the first state institution in Russia dedicated to contemporary art. This project will facilitate the establishment of cultural and operational ties between these important museums.

The exhibition is devoted to Arte Povera, the movement developed in the second half of the Sixties for which Italian 20th-century art is particularly revered. Major representatives of this movement are Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Gilberto Zorio. Combining traditional technique and unusual, ’non-artistic’ materials, these artists (most of them young and from Turin) were able to voice new ideas and discover a new mode of expression.

The exhibition features early and more mature works, thereby giving the visitor both a general impression of Arte Povera, and an understanding of each individual artist. The exhibit mainly consists of works from 1967 to 1971. Special attention should be paid to ’Neon in Cement’ by Anselmo (1967-1970), ’Handrail No. 2′ by Boetti (1966), ’Untitled’ by Calzolari (1970-1971), ’Speculum Italiae’ by Fabro (1971), ’Venus of the Rags’ by Pistoletto (1967) and ’Tent’ by Zorio (1967). Also on show are such monumental works as ’Tree of 11 Metres’ by Penone (1989) and ’Igloo’ by Mario Merz (1981), as well as conceptual-poetic works including ’House of Lucretius’ by Giulio Paolini (1981).

A leading exponent of Arte Povera was Mario Merz (1925-2003), whose oeuvre was celebrated in a 1989 retrospective at New York’s Solomon Guggenheim Museum. Another key figure in the movement was Luciano Fabro (1936-2007). A solo exhibition of Fabro’s work was held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in 1996 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. A major solo exhibition by the artist Giulio Paoloni (b. 1940) took place in 2003, at the Prada Foundation in Milan. In 2004 there was an important retrospective of works by Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947) at the Centre Georges Pompidou. A retrospective on the art of Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933) is currently showing at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st-Century Arts in Rome (after exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). From 2011 to 2012 a touring retrospective of works by Alighiero Boetti (1940-2004) will visit the Queen Sofia Museum of Art in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Among other notable exhibitions of Arte Povera: ’Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1971′, shown between 2001 and 2003 at the Tate Modern, the Walker Art Centre, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. To mark the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification an Arte Povera exhibition is planned in five major museums of contemporary art in Italy, aiming to emphasise the important role this movement played in 20th-century art.