Michelangelo Pistoletto is an Italian painter, sculptor and art theorist, who represents Arte Povera movement.
Background
Michelangelo Pistoletto was born on June 23, 1933 in Biella, Italy. He is the son of Ettore Olivero Pistoletto, an artist, and Livia Fila. A year after Pistoletto was born, his father moved the family to Turin and opened an art restoration workshop.
Education
Pistoletto's artistic training began in the studio of his father. Some time later, he attended Armando Testa’s advertising design school.
Career
Early in his career, Pistoletto developed a strong interest in the conceptual aspects of art objects. This included his use of humble materials, such as tissue paper and mirrors, which helped lay foundations for the Arte Povera movement.
Since 1947 to 1958, Pistoletto worked in his father’s, Ettore Olivero Pistoletto, workshop in Turin. The following year, in 1959, Michelangelo participated in the Biennale di San Marino. In 1960, he had his first solo show at Galleria Galatea. The same year, the painter made several life-sized self-portraits on gold, silver and copper monochrome backgrounds. In 1961, Pistoletto created the series of works entitled "The Present", painting his own image on a black background, to which a layer of transparent varnish gave a mirror gloss.
In 1964, at Galleria Sperone in Turin, Michelangelo Pistoletto showed the body of work called "Plexiglass". In 1965-1966, the painter exhibited a set of works, entitled "Minus Objects", in his studio. These works are considered to be fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera movement. Some time later, in 1976, he published "One Hundred Exhibitions in the Month of October", a booklet, that describes a hundred ideas for works, conceived over a month, many of which he carried out in the following years.
In 1981, at Salvatore Ala Gallery in New York, Pistoletto exhibited "The Nativity", the first example of the rigid polyurethane sculptures he created in the early eighties. In 1984, he remade some of these works in marble. During the period from 1985 to 1989, Pistoletto worked on the creation of a new cycle of works, made up of surfaces and volumes in anonymous materials and dark, gloomy colours.
Since 1991 till 2000, he held the post of a Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Together with his students, he developed an innovative program, the aim of which was to break down the traditional barriers between artistic disciplines. In 1996, Pistoletto founded the art city Cittadelarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in a discarded textile factory near Biella, as a centre and "laboratory", supporting and researching creative resources and producing innovative ideas and possibilities.
In 2002, Pistoletto held the post of an Artistic Director of Turin International Biennial of Young Art entitled "Big Social Game". In 2011, Michelangelo served as an Artistic Director of Evento 2011 – L'art pour une ré-évolution urbaine in Bordeaux. In 2015, he created a work, called "Rebirth", in the park of the Palace of Nations in Geneva, headquarters of the UN, costituted of a huge symbol of the Third Paradise, formed of 193 stones.
The painter took part in numerous exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (twelve times), Documenta (four times) and others.
Views
Pistoletto rejected conventional art world practices with his constant shifting of the type of work he created, and by his insistence on avoiding the creation of objects only for visual admiration.
Quotations:
"At the crossroads between abstraction and representation, where I think every young painter today has passed or remained, I chose the representation of humans, because I feel it best suited to realizing my need to express particular feelings and situations of the human condition, what for me is the most vital and burning issue of all time."
"Above all, artists must not be only in art galleries or museums — they must be present in all possible activities. The artist must be the sponsor of thought in whatever endeavor people take on, at every level, from that of the 'masses' to that of 'command.'"
"Art is the primary expression of human creativity, thus the constant reference for every structural, technical, economic, and behavioral activity of society."