Arte Povera was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are Milan, Rome, Genoa, Venice, Naples and Bologna. The term was coined by Italian art critic Germano Celant in 1967 and introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture.
Jannis Kounellis was a Greek Italian artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.
Germano Celant was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" in the 1967 Flash Art piece "Appunti Per Una Guerriglia", which would become the manifesto for the Arte Povera artistic and political movement. He wrote many articles and books on the subject.
Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of The Interview Project, an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is also co-editor of the Cahiers d'Art review. He lives and works in London.
Alberto Burri was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as a polymaterialist. He had connections with Lucio Fontana's spatialism and, with Antoni Tàpies, an influence on the revival of the art of post-war assembly in the United States as in Europe.
The Rivoli Castle is a former Residence of the Royal House of Savoy in Rivoli. It is currently home to the Castello di Rivoli – Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, the museum of contemporary art of Turin.
The Nicola Trussardi Foundation is a non-profit institution for the promotion of contemporary art and culture. Created in 1996, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation ran its own exhibiting space in Piazza della Scala in Milan.
New European Painting emerged in the 1980s and reached a critical point of major distinction and influence in the 1990s with painters like Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Bracha L. Ettinger whose paintings have established and continue to create a new dialogue between the historical archive, American Abstraction and figuration. The major new European painters of this era show strong engagements with painful personal and general history, as well as shared history; its memory and its oblivion; and with life under the shadow of World War II, utilizing research in new and old materials, photography and oil painting.
Giuliana Setari Carusi is an Italian contemporary art collector and a major figure in the international art world. After many years in Brussels, New York and Milan, she currently lives between Paris and Brussels. Together with her husband Tommaso Setari she started in the early 80s collecting contemporary art: their collection is now well known internationally. She is the founding President of the non-profit charity organization Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art.
Michael Rakowitz is an Iraqi-American artist living and working in Chicago. He is best known for his conceptual art shown in non-gallery contexts.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American writer, art historian, and exhibition maker who served as the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin in 2009 and from 2016 to 2023. She was also the founding Director of Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti from 2017 to 2023. She was Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University (2013–2019). She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. She is currently Honorary Guest Professor at FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland. She has lectured widely at art and educational institutions and Universities for the Arts, including the Goethe University, Frankfurt; Harvard University, Cambridge; MIT, Boston; Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Dehli; Cooper Union, New York; The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; Monash University, Melbourne; Di Tella University, Buenos Aires; Northwestern University, Chicago, and UNITO, Università di Torino, Turin.
Gilberto Zorio is an Italian artist associated with the Italian Arte Povera movement. Zorio's artwork shows his fascination with natural processes, alchemical transformation, and the release of energy. His sculptures, paintings, and performances are often read as metaphors for revolutionary human action, transformation, and creativity. He is known for his use of materials including: incandescent electric light tubes, steel, pitch, motifs, and processes through the use of evaporation and oxidation. He also creates precarious installations using fragile materials such as Stella di Bronzo and Acidi within his work.
Documenta 13 was the thirteenth edition of the German contemporary art exhibition Documenta. It took place between 9 June until 16 September 2012 in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition was held under the theme "collapse and recovery". Exhibits could be seen in several venues in the city, among others in the Fridericianum museum, in the Orangerie and in the Karlsaue, a large urban park.
Francesco Vezzoli is an Italian artist and filmmaker.
Giannalberto Bendazzi was an Italian animation historian, author, and professor.
Alfredo Aceto is a visual artist based between Turin and Geneva. Aceto was born in Turin, Italy. He studied fine arts at the École cantonale d'art de Lausanne (ÉCAL). His work has been exhibited in many international surveys, including DOC!, Paris, Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome, Museo del 900, Milan, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Genève, Geneva, and Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus. His practice includes film, installation, performance, text and sculpture, and is mainly concerned with the body and the biography.
Fondazione Prada, co-chaired by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli since 1995, is an institution dedicated to contemporary art and culture. From 1993 to 2010, the Fondazione has organised 24 solo shows at its exhibition spaces in Milan, conceived as dialogues with acclaimed contemporary artists. In 2015, the Fondazione Prada opened a new, permanent facility in Milan.
Luca Pozzi is an Italian artist.
This is a bibliography for Hans-Ulrich Obrist, a Swiss art curator, critic and historian of art. He currently lives in London.
Marco Scotini is an Italian curator, writer and art critic based in Milan, where he is artistic director of the FM Center for Contemporary Art and Head of the Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies Department at NABA.
