Jacopo Galimberti - A Third-Worldist Art - Germano Celant's Invention of Arte Povera

A Third-worldist Art?
Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

Jacopo Galimberti
Detail from Mario Ceroli, La

Cina (China), 1965 (plate 1).
DOI:
10.1111/1467-8365.12006
Art History | ISSN 0141-6790
36 | 2 | April 2013 | pages 418-441
Association of Art Historians 2013
In an interview given in 1992, the French art critic Pierre Restany noted that through
arte povera his Italian colleague Germano Celant had proposed a guerrilla warfare art
against the rich world that he considered to be represented by certain contemporary
art trends such as Nouveau ralisme Later he would relinquish this political dimension
in order to transform arte povera into a sort of conceptual-minimal [art].1 This essay
examines the two issues raised by Restanys retrospective judgement: firstly, Celants
promotion of the idea of arte povera (meaning poor art); and secondly, his advocacy of
guerrilla warfare and subsequent move away from claiming a political dimension to
arte povera.
To date neither the theoretical and political path of Celants advocacy of arte
povera has been charted nor has the impact of the 196768 protests on arte povera artists
been studied in great detail. In beginning this double task, this study introduces
a distinction between arte povera and arte povera. Arte povera, a term canonized
mostly in the 1980s and 1990s, identifies an art trend, while arte povera (in Italian)
refers to the tentative critical category devised by Celant in the summer of 1967. The
majority of scholars have paid insufficient attention to the discrepancy between
arte povera and arte povera, focusing, intentionally or not, on the former. An analysis
that situates the changing notion of arte povera within its more immediate discursive
framework and historical background provides the only means of understanding arte
poveras genesis and initial success. Those who challenged Celants narrative have
concentrated on the 1960s texts he republished and translated for his arte poverarelated books and exhibition catalogues from the past three decades.2 Yet, not only
are these texts the result of Celants selection, but the translations provided are not
always accurate. Celant appears to have felt uneasy about the ideological context of
arte povera in the political climate of the 1980s. For the 1985 show The Knot: Arte Povera,
for instance, Celant translated one of his 1968 texts from Italian to English, but, in
either a typographic error or an attempt to white-out the political roots of arte povera,
he omitted a crucial parenthetical sentence: Workers striking, students setting cars
on fire and building barricades, and intellectuals cooperating with both.3
In his late 1967-early 1968 texts, Celant attributed third-worldist overtones
to non-figurative artworks, controversially embedding them in a process of
politicizing cultural production then at its apex.4 The concept of arte povera did not
emerge alongside political radicalism, but rather in dialogue with it. Dismissing
this conflation as anecdotal or opportunistic destroys the historical significance of
Celants statements from 196768, whereas a close examination of his ideas cannot
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be separated from an investigation of the relationship between the social upheavals

and the artists.5 In Italy the student unrest laid the groundwork for political upheaval
throughout the 1970s. The artists that Celant described through the notion of arte
povera were not strangers to politics in this decade, as the case of Piero Gilardi will
demonstrate here. However, as Restanys retrospective assessment indicates, from
the end of 1968 Celants orientation would quickly change, making his ideas about
arte povera internationally known yet removing him from the factory workers struggle
which saw a new beginning in Turin in July 1969.6
From Pop to Weapons
1 Mario Ceroli, La Cina

(China), 1965. Wood, 185
215 875 cm. Rome:
Collection of the Artist.
Photo: Mario Ceroli.
Following the distribution of Jerzy Grotowskis manifesto, Towards a Poor Theatre, in

April 1967 artist Giulio Paolini (a close friend of Celant) mentioned the idea of an
impoverishment of art in an interview with art critic Carla Lonzi. However, he
did not pursue his reflections any further.7 Before picking up on Paolinis idea and
elaborating on it, Celant painstakingly developed some provisional concepts such
as im spazio and art of the object. This process can be summarized as follows. A few
weeks after Paolinis observation, Celant wrote a short essay for an exhibition, Lo
spazio dellimmagine (The space of the image), opening at the beginning of July.8 Shortly
thereafter, he expanded on his ideas in two texts published in Bit and Casabella. In
the latter in particular, Celant revolved his discussion around the notion of im spazio
(im space, meaning image space) which was constructed in binary opposition to
another strand that he characterized as art of the object [oggettuale] or pop.9 Celant
described the work of a diverse group of artists, from the Italians Alberto Biasi and
Enrico Castellani to the Americans Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris and Carl Andre, who
had participated in the pioneering New York exhibition Primary Structures, as im spazio.
Under this umbrella term Celant brought together Italian artists loosely connected
with the arte programmata trend, to which he had initially been close, and the latest New
York artistic developments.10
According to Celant, im spazio artists structured the spectators environment and
conceived of it as enclosed and ordered. By contrast, the art of the object [oggettuale]
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Jacopo Galimberti
or pop encouraged the public to participate in the creation of an open space. In

this second group, Celant included an equally varied range of artists such as Claes
Oldenburg, Edward Kienholz, Alighiero Boetti, Mario Ceroli, Luciano Fabro, Gilardi,
Jannis Kounellis and Paolini. Artists Celant viewed as pop and those he would
soon define as arte povera were still part of the same category in July 1967. In Celants
subsequent narratives, the exhibitions Arte abitabile (Inhabitable art), from June 1966,
and Lo spazio degli elementi: Fuocoooooco, Immagine, Accqqua, Terrrrrra (The space of elements:
Fiiiiirere. Image, Watttter, Earrrrrrth) of June 1967, were situated at the beginning
of arte povera.11 Yet until April 1967 artists such as Pistoletto, Gilardi or Anslemo
were displayed alongside Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin, and James Rosenquist.12 By
the same token, the pop atmosphere of the Turin Piper discotheque, where Gilardi
and Pistoletto set two performances at the beginning of 1967, suggested a link to
fashionable venues and high profile entertainment, rather than asceticism and
impoverishment.13 In the early summer of 1967, a clear-cut distinction between pop,
primary structures, and arte povera was hardly tenable.
In August or September 1967, Celant wrote a second article for Casabella. Neglected
by most subsequent commentators, this is the first instance in which he adopted the
critical category of arte povera.14 Celant argued that the latest San Marino Biennale was
characterized by two polarities: rich art and arte povera. He considered these as two
attitudes that could apply to art, cinema, theatre and architecture. Celant contrasted
arte povera to pop art and op art, affirming that the latter embraced contemporary
technology and thereby perpetuated the renaissance dream of dominating nature.
Instead, arte povera was simple, pre-iconographic, a-historical and based on primary
structures.15 If pop art and op art were complex, artificial, and forced a cultural
mediation over the act of the artist, arte povera favoured an unmediated identification
of an author-nature with its actions, aiming to merge art and life. This enabled arte
povera to return to the real man, Celant wrote, implicitly referring to Karl Marx.
According to him, the arte povera attitude was recognizable in works by Anselmo,
Boetti, Paolini and Pino Pascali, but also in Warhols films and recent projects
by Flavin, Tony De Lap, and Morris. Celants categories were shifting. The artists
of Primary Structures were still likened to arte povera; by contrast, pop art was now
repudiated. For the critic, one of the few examples of arte povera at the San Marino
Biennale was Cerolis Cina (China) (plate 1), also reproduced on Casabellas front cover.
He asserted that Cina embodied:
the image of our ideological fear, the achievement of a mass-produced
conceptual handicraft, mediated through an artistic handicraft. The
figures outlines are squared and flat, different and differentiated they
proceed close-knit. The ideological homogeneity creates a behaviouristic
homogeneity. In China it is the man, in the West the machine; the system is
the same, but the aims are different. We are in favour of the man.16
In the midst of the Chinese cultural revolution and the fascination it generated in
Western leftists, the praise of a sort of humanist poverty expressed in Celants text
partly derived its references from Mao Zedong and pre-industrial China.17
In late September Celant set up Arte Povera Im Spazio, an exhibition at La Bertesca
Gallery that summarized his latest theories. It was conceived as a diptych where im
spazio art and arte povera illustrated their dialectical interplay.18 Nevertheless, in his
subsequent texts the notion of im spazio would be discarded. The exhibition catalogue
recapitulated what he had maintained in Casabella. For the first time, Celant cited
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Grotowoski and the Living Theatre as pivotal to his theoretical elaboration.19 The
latter staged a pacifist libertarian America, about which Celant was enthusiastic.20 A
text similar to that of La Bertesca was published in DArs Agency a few days later. Here
Celants article was introduced by an anonymous statement dealing with Primary
Structures and suggesting that arte povera was bound up with what had been displayed
there. Importantly, in DArs Agency Celant claimed that arte povera was reminiscent of a
medieval proletarian technique.21
In late autumn, Celant published in the new review Flash Art a text which read as
a manifesto: Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerrilla Warfare.22 If arte povera was initially an
attitude that could exist in cinema or theatre, this text identified it as the approach of
a circumscribed nucleus of artists (Anselmo, Boetti, Fabro, Gilardi, Kounellis, Mario
Merz, Paolini, Pascali, Gianni Piacentino, Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, and Zorio) which
could also include other associated artists; Celant mentioned fifteen.23 Up to this
point Celants idea of arte povera was only loosely linked to a political vocabulary, and
its opposition to rich art vaguely suggested leftist leanings. Aside from emphasizing
the ideas developed in his previous interventions, in Flash Art Celant upped the ante.
His opening sentence indulged in nostalgia, positing that first comes the human
being and then the system, or that is how it was in antiquity. Today, however,
society presumes to make pre-packaged human beings, ready for consumption.
Celant went on to deplore the commodification of art, championing an art whose
message was the man, the real man (Marx). In a significant twist, he was now
uncompromising vis--vis primary structures, dismissing it as a formalistic strand
of rich art. After having quoted the French philosopher and revolutionary Rgis
Debray, he explained that with arte povera the artist is no longer among the ranks
of the exploited, the artist has become a guerrilla committed to an anti-systemic
liberation. The text ended with a prophetic statement: the guerrilla warfare, in fact,
has already begun.
However, Celants parallel between the ethos of guerrillas and the arte povera
artists was deliberately reticent in regard to its specific applications in art. In Gilardis
reception of the text, aligning the artist with the guerilla underlined the need for a
radical change in the relationship between artists and the public. The public should
lose its status as a passive beholder. Guerrilla warfare required a mutual, creative
exchange between soldiers and populace, allowing the latter to join in the fight.24
Pistoletto also liked Celants punchy idea and agreed with Gilardi that the reference
to guerrilla warfare highlighted the primacy of cooperation.25
Celants polemic can be explained as the result of a twofold goal. Firstly, Celant
characterized his art movement as seeking a new political agency, stemming from
a preliminary assimilation of artists and the exploited. Secondly, Celants use of
militant terminology enabled him to draw an analogy to, and facilitate a dialogue
with, the political vanguard represented by the students. It has hitherto gone
unnoticed that Celants manifesto, written around 23 November, coincided with
the first two major university occupations of the academic year, that of Cattolica
University in Milan, on 17 November, and Turin University on 27 November.26
This synchronicity with the student movement cannot be overestimated. After
his manifesto, the first exhibition curated by Celant, Collage 1, was set up in midDecember at the University of Genoa, the city where he had studied and still lived.
Here the students attentively followed the unfolding of the events in Turin, and were
to occupy their own university before the end of the year. On this occasion they
observed the works and performances and attended the debate organized for the
opening; no contestazione (protest) took place.27
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Jacopo Galimberti
A few days before Collage 1, Daniela Palazzoli had inaugurated Con temp lazione (a
pun meaning both contemplation and with time the action), a show involving
three Turin galleries and many of the artists Celant had grouped together as arte
povera.28 Palazzolis exhibition catalogue contained a text alluding to Celants ideas,
where although she did not use the newly coined term arte povera, Palazzoli referred to
guerrilla warfare as offering a viable way for artists to re-think their political agency.
She rejected the charge that art was simply part of the superstructure and defined it
as the dynamics of the structure.29 While war was the programming of a policy,
guerrilla warfare was the recognition of a spiritual need [the] programming of the
energy needed for the accomplishment of politics.30
Palazzolis view of the artists mission, caught between deferred action and
guerrilla warfare, was articulated through Bit. Self-defined as the most aggressive
Italian art magazine, Bit had been directed by Palazzoli since its inception in March
1967. One of its objectives was to achieve a provocative conflation of art, politics,
sexuality, and youth culture. Unlike the vast majority of the press, which portrayed
student activists as hooligans, Bit openly backed them. Unsurprisingly, Celant chose
Bit to release an article intensifying the use of politicized language. In this text, dated
December 1967, he praised multiples but showed their limits within the frame
of a political, poetic, visual revolution, as they refuted the myth of the unique
object without completely destroying it.31 Quoting Debray, he finished with an
inflammatory statement claiming that a magazine like Bit advocated a permanent
cultural revolution, everywhere, by every means. Why do we talk of the weapons at
home? It is better to use them. The real man (Marx) has to be made not described.
We are in favour of guerrilla warfare!32 According to Bits December issue Boettis
exhibition at La Bertesca was entitled Guerriglia!, an ephemeral title perhaps attesting to
Celants proposal.33 Before considering the first show entitled Arte povera, and in order
to gain a better understanding of this terms overtones and reception, it is necessary
to contextualize the concept of guerrilla warfare and explore its connection with the
student movement, particularly in Turin.
Celant was the first in Italy to apply the notion of guerrilla warfare to the artistic
sphere, but this term had also been used in various discourses during the latter
part of 1967.34 By maintaining his plea for guerrilla warfare, Celant was realigning
his rhetoric with, or even anticipating, the most radical elements of the protest
movement. The Italian delegation of the International Vietnam Congress (which
took place in West Berlin on 17 and 18 February 1968) would invoke the need for an
armed critique capable of overtaking the purely verbal weapons of the critique.35
Although the successes of the North Vietnamese forces, viewed as implementing
similar warfare techniques, contributed to its renown, the international popularity
of the guerrilla warfare notion relied on its formulation in Debrays Revolution in the
Revolution? Translated into Italian at the beginning of 1967, this book illustrated the foco
theory that Debray had seen in action in Latin America before being captured in the
spring of 1967, a few months before Ernesto Che Guevaras execution in October.36
Foco theory differed from both the Leninist revolutionary model, advocating the rise
of the urban proletariat, and the Chinese experience of a mass peasant movement.
According to Fredric Jameson, guerrilla actions foco, the centre of the guerrillas
operations, was in and of itself a figure for the transformed, revolutionary society
to come; guerrillas were neither workers nor peasants (still less, intellectuals), but
rather something entirely new.37 Leftist European students appropriated guerrilla
warfare strategy. In their joint statement (dated September 1967) two prominent
leaders of the German student movement, Rudi Dutschke and Hans Jrgen Krahl,
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2 Poster issued on the

occasion of the Turin
University occupation,
December 1967. Photo:
Jacopo Galimberti.
called for the advent of a guerillero, subverting the

repressive institutions and bringing rural guerrilla
warfare from the third world to western cities.38
Almost at the same time as Celants Flash Art text, the
November issue of the Italian magazine Che Fare echoed
the Germans: today the strategic and tactical invention
is that of guerrilla warfare if it previously was a
peasant invention it is now an urban means of fighting
in the industrialized cities.39 Turins radical students
were aware of the Berlin students initiatives. Between
late November 1967 and January 1968 the premises
of Palazzo Campana were occupied three times.
Here the student activists set up counter-courses
predicated upon the model of the West Berlin Freie
Universitt (plate 2). In January 1968 the situationistminded fanzine S, provisionally hosted by the high
profile intellectual magazine Quindici, defined the Turin
counter-courses as a form of guerilla warfare.40 From
Paris, Guy Debord reacted by asserting that while
there was no association between S, Quindici, and the
International Situationist, in Italy the International
Situationist approves only of the radical wing which
emerged during the Turin University occupation.41
Debords interest in the Italian student movement
was far from unique. While Celant was elaborating
the notion of arte povera, since the summer of 1967
the student movement had begun garnering the attention of intellectuals. In June
one of the key documents of the protest, the Tesi della Sapienza (Sapienza theses), was
published in the leading social sciences periodical Il Mulino.42 By the end of the year
the significance of the students struggles became cogent, as demonstrated by Quindicis
decision to publish documents issued by the occupied universities beginning with
Turin. This initiative tripled the number of copies sold.43 The unrest was a topic highly
debated in this city in late autumn, where artists and intellectuals sought a dialogue
with the students. For instance, Gilbert Zorio, then a student himself, and Piero
Gilardi attended students assemblies; an exchange between students, intellectuals,
and artists could also be had at the leftist association called Unione Culturale (Turin).44
Towards the end of 1967, particularly in Turin, the idea of a guerilla warfare art
resonated with the student movements practices. Moreover, such an idea directly
referenced Debrays Guevarist book and, indirectly, the combative anti-colonialism
of Frantz Fanons The Wretched of the Earth, translated into Italian by the Turin-based
publishing house Einaudi the previous year. In Celants writings the call for violence
should be read as metaphorical; he advocated a resolute and impetuous action whose
rationale he likened to that of guerrillas, but whose means never followed suit.
Nevertheless, nothing could be further from a pacifist Franciscan attitude, in light
of which Celants theories have occasionally been interpreted.45 The term arte povera
primarily evoked a sort of Italian third-worldist art, as the reception of the first show
entitled Arte Povera indicated.
This exhibition was curated by Celant at the De Foscherari Gallery (Bologna) in
February 1968. His new text, entitled Arte Povera, accompanied works by Anselmo,
Boetti, Ceroli, Fabro, Kounellis, Mario Merz, Paolini, Pascali, Piacentino, Pistoletto,
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Jacopo Galimberti
Prini, and Zorio; Gilardi was invited but withdrew his artworks.46 In the following
three months both the exhibition and the concept of arte povera were discussed by
prominent art critics, intellectuals, and the Communist Party member and painter
Renato Guttuso.47 Celants claims were the subject of heated debate prefiguring
most of the subsequent critical reflections about arte povera, but they also dealt
with a topic that would often be discounted starting from the 1980s; namely, arte
poveras complex political overtones. In Bologna, Celant did not mention guerilla
warfare. Nevertheless, the commentators, aware of Celants previous interventions,
did not eschew the issue of a guerilla warfare art. According to Pietro Bonfiglioli
two insufficient philosophies, that of negation and mass media, had opened
up an empty human space that some tried to fill with an anarchic anti-systemic
voluntarism termed arte povera or guerilla warfare, red guards, black power,
revolt of the university.48 He expressed his esteem for Celants proposals, but
reminded him that arte povera was not immune to the risk of becoming a romantic
medievalist revival la William Morris. He predicted that arte povera will somehow
have to pass through a poor war [guerra povera] to become life.49 Bonfigliolis
comments suggest that the term arte povera called to mind what was also defined as
guerra povera; that is, the war of the poor, guerilla warfare.
Similarly to Bonfiglioli, Vittorio Boarini warned against the danger that arte
poveras self-effacing tone would turn out to be a form of uncritical primitivism.50
Francesco Arcangeli and Renato Barilli were perplexed, and pondered whether arte
poveras primary and tautological aspects were not merely trite and reductive. In
response to Celants militant tones, Arcangeli stressed the need for art to remain
indirect and metaphorical, particularly now that the student movement considered
Che Guevara as the true artist.51 Guttuso declared his admiration for Celants
artists, yet he objected to their supposed lack of refinement and remarked that poor
and proletarian were not synonyms. Replying to Arcangeli, he underlined the
importance of artists within a revolutionary process, but also their specificity; art,
he argued, should neither substitute for nor be substituted by political organization,
guerilla warfare, barricades.52 Cartabianca reviewed the De Foscherari exhibition.
While recognizing the heterogeneity of the works displayed, the reviewer asserted
that Celant was seeking to establish a precise link with the extra-artistic world of
those current radical movements fighting against the bourgeois-capitalist system.53
Through the notion of arte povera Celant stimulated debate because the deliberate
ambivalence of his critical category enabled him to address extremely sensitive issues,
ranging from the political agency of artists to the third-worldist and proletarian
implications of a non-figurative art. This generated a great deal of expectation, but
it also linked up with the recent Italian past. In 1968 Mario Merz made Giap Igloo,
inscribing on one of his Igloos a sentence by V Nguyn Gip, the commander in chief
of the Peoples Army of Vietnam. Twenty years later, while commenting on Gips
observation (If the enemy masses his forces he loses ground, if he scatters he loses
strength) he called the Vietcong partisans.54 Merz himself had been associated
with partisans during the Second World War. His translation of a distant battle into
familiar terms suggests that, aside from conjuring up thought-provoking analogies
with Guevara and the students struggles, the idea of a guerrilla warfare art retrieved
poignant memories of the Italian Resistance.
The Occupations
By the end of February 1968, nineteen of the thirty-three Italian state universities
had been occupied.55 On 1 March the battle of the Valle Giulia occurred and this
425
3 Giancarlo de Carlo, Marco

Bellocchio and Bruno Caruso,
La protest della giovent (The
protest of the youth), 1968.
Mixed media, dimensions
unknown (destroyed). Photo:
Milan Triennale.
came to be seen as a turning point in the students unrest.56 The students attempted
to occupy Romes Architecture Faculty, which happened to be closely situated to
the Modern Art Gallery. They attacked the police protecting the buildings in a siege
that resulted in hundreds of injured students and forty-six hospitalized policemen.57
An anonymous text enthusiastically reporting the events was published in Bit. It
eulogized the students and accused the artists of pettiness:
The students faced the police and overran them, driving them out of
the campus showing that guerrilla warfare is possible. The most violent
clash took place in front of the contemporary art museum. This clash is
destined to go down in the history of Italian culture, as it established a clear
dichotomy between those who were fighting on the street, weapons in hand,
and those who fight to have some metres of wall in the museum rooms.58
One month later a number of artists and art-world personalities occupied the Modern
Art Gallery in Milan, invoking the self-management of museums and cultural
institutions. This gesture was mostly symbolic and lasted only two hours. The
occupants declared the student movement as the ideal companion in the process
of shaping a shared ideological platform.59 The occupation of the Milan Triennale
would be the next event in which some artists appropriated the student movements
means and vocabulary.
The Triennale exhibitions theme was the Il grande numero (The large number),
indicating the need for an investigation of mass-society challenges. It included
works by Anselmo, Boetti, Fabro, Kounellis, Merz, Piacentino, Prini and Zorio. One
room of the show depicted the student unrest, displaying an installation consisting
of a fictitious barricade made of stones and rubble (plate 3). On the opening day the
Triennale was contested by artists, architects, and students on the ground of its
consumerist approach to culture, serving the ruling classes and major brands.60 The
police were called but, attempting to avoid a clash with the protesters, Triennale
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Jacopo Galimberti
administrators welcomed a discussion and let the protesters in. Inside, the situation
bordered on hysterical. Some activists feared that the police would take advantage of
the enclosed space to gas them.61 They hastened a vote, deciding on the immediate
occupation of the Triennale premises. The institution remained in their hands until 7
June, when the police broke in. Earlier in the year the Triennale had invited Pistoletto
to exhibit.62 The committee had a predetermined idea of what his project should look
like. Pistoletto declined the invitation. When he read that the exhibition had been
occupied by students and artists, he enthusiastically went to Milan wondering what
could come of such an encounter.63 Once there, however, he was disappointed. In
fact, the Triennale occupation was only partly inspired by the Beaux-Arts occupation
in Paris which had begun two weeks earlier, where students and artists implemented
the Atelier Populaire, a popular workshop where they issued thousands of political
silkscreen posters related to ongoing political events.64 Unlike the Atelier Populaire,
where the artistic dimension had been safeguarded, in Milan the occupiers produced
political tracts.
Soon after the Triennale occupation, the art critic Lonzi presented a manifesto
co-signed by Fabro and Paolini, two practitioners of what Celant defined as arte povera.
This text, which would later be read during the Venice Biennale, was a riposte to
the emerging figure of the artist as political activist. The writing urged artists to
go beyond the fragmentation inherent in modern society and embody a model of
non-identification: while a worker or a student is defined by their being part of a
category, being an artist does not coincide with enrolment in a trade union.65 Lonzi,
Paolini and Fabro claimed that a bourgeois or Marxist interpretation of the artist
figure was equally reductive, for the artist the identification with this society or with
another hypothetical one is impossible. Non-identification with the social structure
is one of their prerogatives.66 Lonzi subscribed to the artists protests against art
institutions, but saw the alliance with students and workers as dictated only by
circumstance. The manifesto was poorly received: they treated us as if we were from
outer space, Lonzi commented.67
After the Triennale occupation many expected the Venice Biennale to come
under siege. Venice was one of the student protests hubs. The Fine Art School had
4 Carabinieri patrolling the

Venice Biennale pavilions,
June 1968. Photo: Gianni
Berengo Gardin.
427
been occupied for several weeks and on 89 June the Architecture Faculty would
host an international conference of the student movement drawing approximately
one thousand participants, including two hundred workers.68 An anonymous letter
sent to the Biennale warned that the occupants of the Triennale were now organizing
a takeover of the Biennale: get ready they are crazy.69 The administration took
drastic measures. The controls were so strict that artists who looked exactly like
occupiers encountered serious difficulties trying to access the areas designated for
the display of their works (plate 4).70 Worried by these events, ambassadors, insurance
agencies and private collectors began writing telegrams either asking to withdraw
works or enquiring about security measures.71 The day the police evacuated Milan
Triennale a Biennale Boycotting Committee comprising students, workers, and
revolutionary intellectuals was put in place and issued two manifestos.72 It also sent a
letter to the Italian artists exhibiting at the Biennale. Couched in a mixture of flattery
and blackmail, it urged the artists to re-define their role:
Now you could display your work only under the ignominious protection
of the police [thus] integrating yourself in the self-protective mechanism
of the system. Instead, if you refused to display you would define your role
as that of an intellectual, and contribute to the emergence of a dialogue
between the forces of Art [sic].73
Two victims of this situation were Pistoletto and Pascali. The institution had given
the former an entire room in which he had planned a collaborative performance. In
April he issued a hand-written poster, redolent of dazibao (propaganda posters used
during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and appropriated by leftist students in Europe),
which invited the publics cooperation. During the day, exhibition visitors would
find defenceless human bodies sleeping in hammocks.74 By night, Pistoletto and the
other participants would go around the town wed do small poetic things, small
5 Artists face the police in

Piazza San Marco Venice
(Emilio Vedova visible in the
foreground), 1968. Photo:
Cameraphoto.
428
Jacopo Galimberti
6 Tommaso Trini in Piazza

San Marco, 1968. Photo:
Cameraphoto.
sculptures or paintings, to leave on the doors or on the windows of the houses, so that
the Venetians would find little poetic gifts in the morning.75 As he had limited his
requests to some hooks for the hammocks, he was suspected of plotting with students
and was deprived of his room. They may have thought that we were going to hang
someone up!, he vividly recounted.76 Pistoletto did not attend the opening in order to
avoid being involved in riots against the police. The situation inspired bitter reflections:
Its true that art is dead for us but only because you confuse art with
superstructures or you confuse art with the war on the superstructures
The only political thing an artist can do today is to try to escape from this
bind The superstructures exist but an artist doesnt try to attack them,
he simply tries to free himself from them Be more artistic in your politics
and more political in your art. But dont get me wrong again, Im not talking
about party politics, guerrilla warfare, power or protest, I am talking about
politics in the deep sense.77
On the day of the opening the Padova battalion patrolled the entrances. No attempt
to occupy the exhibition was implemented, yet in the evening a demonstration
began. Approximately two hundred students paraded through Venice, stopping in
Piazza San Marco where they were joined by artists as well as a few workers (plate 5).78
The ensuing events are unclear. The police suddenly charged the demonstrators;
the clash lasted for hours and also involved painters such as Giangiacomo Spadari
and the art critic Tommaso Trini (plate 6), who was close to many arte povera artists.79
429
Several people were arrested. As a symbol of protest against the violence, many artists
covered their exhibits or withdrew them temporarily (plate 7). Yet, the Biennale
Boycotting Committees letter had exerted additional pressure on the Italian artists
who often extended their protest to the students intimidations, as Pascali did in a
telegram in Bit Bit also published a text in which Pascali expatiated on his position,
aligning himself with Fabro, Paolini, and Pistoletto: an artist has to be isolated
because thats the only way they can take full responsibility for what they do without
searching for a collective support.80 Pascali, who defended his position in a public
meeting in Venice (plate 8), viewed the creative act as endowed with a revolutionary
potential that was more credible than the demonstration following the opening:
Its clear that the existing Biennale structure doesnt work [but] the thing
in Piazza San Marco was really pitiful the truly political and cultural
problems based on facts, paintings, objects, hence situated on a very
precise and responsible level, were undermined and reduced to the claims of
a category of workers.81
Celant was among the first to deprecate the presence of the police, and dismissed
the Biennale as an antiquated showcase, a ferry-boat making its way indifferently
through the waters of the May revolution, the student rebellion, the vitalistic-mental
research.82 Celant invoked the Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse and argued that
artists such as Boetti, Merz, Pistoletto, and Prini now aspired to shift from arte povera
to poor action [azione povera].83
In the summer of 1968 the Cartabianca editorial team met to discuss the role of art
critics amid the mounting student protest. Trini recorded this conversation, which is
now an invaluable source of information for scholars.84 Celants remarks presented
the least nuanced picture: the students were exposing the limits of a system on the
verge of collapse. Art critics had to speed up this process, questioning the art system,
the galleries, and the relationship with the public; in short, disseminating in the art
world what student activists were doing in the universities and streets. The Parisian
demonstrations, Celant maintained, provided a model of public participation
7 Works covered in a sign of

protest at the 1968 Venice
Biennale. Photo: Gianni
Berengo Gardin.
430
Jacopo Galimberti
8 Pino Pascali and Mario de

Micheli during a meeting in
the Giardini at the XXXIVth
Biennale, 20 June 1968. Photo:
Ugo Mulas, Ugo Mulas
Heirs.
that artists had often failed to achieve.85 In September he was still supporting the
unification of workers, students and intellectuals:
(Workers striking, students setting cars on fire and building barricades, and
intellectuals cooperating with both) . An osmosis is taking place between
the critico-political forces workers + students + intellectuals. The clearly,
dangerously reactionary and reactive corporative system is being supplanted
by the simultaneous presence of all the subversive contributions [aiming
for] an eidetic-practical action that results in the acceleration of the points
of crisis and attrition [sic] between the class that crushes and the class that
constructs in order to destroy itself.86
In contrast to Celants classless society, by June artists such as Fabro, Paolini, Pistoletto
and Pascali were disillusioned about the students and artists protests. What had
happened in the Triennale and Biennale pushed them to accentuate the value of
autonomy and define their role as one transcending ideological struggles.
The initial interest in the movements ideas was a widespread phenomenon,
involving not only young artists, but also Lucio Fontana, aged sixty-nine.87 This
was partly due to the students foregrounding what can be described as, in Luc
Boltanskis and ve Chiapellos terms, an artistic critique of capitalism.88 Although
the influence of the workers movement was present, the students claims of
freedom, authenticity and independence were closer to the bohemian and artistic
traditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than to that of the trade
unions. This legacy notwithstanding, the movements most radical tendencies held
intransigent positions on art and literature, championing a direct political utility for
cultural products. This reminded some intellectuals of the party-line prescriptions of
the Communist Partys post-war cultural policies. Even sympathetic art critics found
it unacceptable that students chastised artists who did not comply with their model
of activism. Students were indebted to them, they argued, for their enlarged idea of
the political sphere would have been impossible without the attempt to re-fashion
the boundaries of aesthetics and politics performed by the avant-gardes in the 1910s
431
and 1920s.89 The Amalfi show, Arte povera, azioni povere, could have been the ideal forum
for confronting these issues.
Gallery owner Marcello Rumma asked Celant to curate a show in the former
Amalfi dockyard as well as in the citys streets and sea. This exhibition, taking
place at the beginning of October, was both a response to the latest Biennale and
an attempt to consider some of the arguments set forth by the protesters in Venice.
The public could interact with the artists and experience art in spaces drastically
different from museums or galleries. Objects and theatre performances were put on
the same level, illustrating Celants idea that de-materialization and actions could
combat commodification. If in Venice the police patrolled the entrances, in Amalfi
no barriers would isolate the works. Biennale national pavilions were countered by
a free mingling of Italians and foreign artists: Richard Long, Jan Dibbets, and Ger
van Elk.90 However, the spirit of the show was not unanimously accepted. In the
general call for collaboration, Boetti opposed the construction of a circle of chairs
in which the sitters turned their backs to each other.91 Gilardi was also provocative,
organizing a football match close to Pistolettos sculptures. While jeopardizing them,
he implicitly pointed out Pistolettos attachment to works whose impoverishment
was glaringly contradicted by their market values.92 One year earlier Pistoletto had
opened his studio to other artists, transforming it into a public space for anyone
interested in cooperation. He did so claiming to be searching for life beyond the
artistic metaphor; but what did arte povera represent if not a metaphorical poverty?93
During the debate taking place in the dockyard Celant acted as mediator between
artists like Boetti, the art critics Filiberto Menna, Trini, Achille Bonito Oliva, and
Gillo Dorfles, and figures such as Gilardi, Boarini and Bonfiglioli. Boarini and
Bonfiglioli rebuked Pistolettos and the Zoo groups street theatre performance,
stating that it fed a hippy ideology defending the figure of the artist as an outcast
wilfully alienated from mainstream society.94 While in February they had adhered
to arte povera, now they saw its failure, for the Amalfi show did not ultimately escape
the separation of art and life. Confronted by Bonfigliolis and Boarinis Marxist
criticism, Celant voiced his malaise. He affirmed: I am not interested in political
discourses, I am not interested in being in politics, but in living in politics.95
Through his statement Celant closed the gap between his militant phraseology and
the distinctively apolitical stance that most arte povera artists had taken since June 1968.
The sole exception was represented by Gilardi. The day the show began, the artists
received the news of the student massacre in Mexico City.96 Today Gilardi still recalls
his profound dissatisfaction; in Amalfi no one seemed concerned about this appalling
event. Such a focus on merely artistic issues would soon persuade him that arte povera
was no longer compatible with his political and ethical agenda.97
In the autumn of 1968 the Italian student movement experienced a backlash. Its
artistic critique of capitalism was gradually waning and other figures came to the
fore, notably the Autunno caldo (hot autumn) factory workers. Celants reorientation
was immediate, though consistent with the type of art critique in which he believed.
Drawing from Susan Sontags essay Against Interpretation, in 1968 he explained that
his texts were homologous to the artworks, and were both active and strategic ,
art critique should renounce its function as judgemental action, it must produce
values, elements of discussion, it has to become a work of strategy.98 Celants first
publication in English, Art Povera [sic] dating from late 1969, was virtually the second
launch of his critical project after that hosted by Flash Art in November 1967.99 As
announced by the linguistically hybrid title, Celant supplemented the Italian artists
with international colleagues, including Walter De Maria, Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke
432
Jacopo Galimberti
and Carl Andre. He also obliterated any references to the student movement and
Marxism. In the 1980s Celant would consider the notion of guerilla warfare in an
artistic context surreal.100 Nonetheless, when arte povera is reinserted into the political
situation of 196768, it can be seen that some of its multifaceted connotations
were part of the semantic field of third-worldism, and that Celants tentative and
contingent fusion of art and politics constituted the crucial factor for the affirmation
of this critical category.
The Other Side of Arte Povera
The occupations of the Milan Triennale or the protests against the Biennale
demonstrate the difficulty of an exchange between artists and militants at the height
of the protest. This does not imply that the cooperation of critics, artists and activists
resulted in failure. Artworks such as Marcel Broodthaers Museum of Modern Art (1968
71) or Antonio Recalcatis show Serie autobiografica (1969), produced in the aftermath of
1968, were highly indebted to the criticism to which artists and art institutions had
been subject.101
Gilardis experience of 196768 differed from that of Celant and the artists today
ascribed to arte povera. In retrospective exhibitions and the publications devoted to arte
povera Gilardis role varies significantly. Celant and Christov-Bakargiev sidelined his
contribution, whereas the Tates retrospective Zero to Infinity and the recent exhibition
Che Fare? Arte Povera the Historic Years hailed his role as pre-eminent.102 In a study
focusing on the emergence of arte povera as a critical category, Gilardi must be regarded
as crucial. He participated in Arte abitabile and Lo spazio degli elementi, and would later be
mentioned among the chief examples of arte povera in Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerilla
Warfare. Subsequently, he was invited to Arte Poveras exhibition at the De Foscherari
Gallery, and he finally participated in Amalfis festival where he was accompanied by
Long, Dibbets and van Elk. In addition, while devising the notion of microemotive
art, encompassing both Italian and foreign artists, Gilardi encouraged Celant to
include Western European and American artists in his 1969 publication. The critic
9 Piero Gilardi, Sassi

(Stones), 1967. Expanded
polyurethane, 20 150
150 cm. Turin: Collection of
the Artist. Photo: Piero
Gilardi.
433
would later relinquish this international tenor in order

to potently insist on the Italianicity of arte povera,
which is today generally accepted.
Gilardis trajectory is here interpreted as one of
the possible routes indicated by the concept of arte
povera until the late summer of 1968. Celants first texts
incisively mingled the aesthetic and the political,
touching upon the artist as a guerrilla, the activation
of the spectator, Debray, a truer humanity, and even
weapons. Celants stance raises important questions
about the epistemological status of his discourses.
What course of action could legitimately embody his
claims? He advocated that workers striking, students
setting cars on fire and building barricades, and
intellectuals cooperate, but the forms and goals of this
alliance remained a moot point.103 In contrast, Gilardi
envisaged his post-1968 turn as the only consistent way
to pursue his artistic activity and foster the political,
poetic, visual revolution Celant had initially saluted.
Albeit courageous, Gilardis undertakings were often on
the verge of collapsing the aesthetic into the political.
Born into a modest family, Gilardi gave up
painting at the beginning of the 1960s to explore the
possibilities of a usable art, exemplified by his Vestitistati danimo (clothes-state of mind) and tapestry. His
most successful accomplishment was the Tappeti-natura
(nature-carpet) series, begun in autumn 1965 (plate 9).
These works were steeped in Gilardis staunch faith in
technology and his inclination towards pop art, which
he considered the embodiment of an American way of
life he viewed favourably.104 Since the early 1960s the
Turinese library of the USIS (United States Information
Service), a propaganda-driven Cold War cultural
institution, had introduced future arte povera artists to
American art, thereby paving the way for Sperones
pop art shows in the mid-1960s.105 The critical and
commercial success of Gilardis Tappeti-natura, showcased
by Sperone in 1966, opened the doors for him to the
international art market, notably Ileana Sonnabends
gallery. Gilardis mastery in the moulding and painting
of polyurethane foam could have produced hightech environments with pop implications and strong
market appeal, as in the case of Montagna (mountain)
(plate 10). However, at the beginning of 1967 the artist
turned his back on these opportunities. He focused on politically nuanced projects
related to salvage material and do-it-yourself, making a choice that did not meet with
Sonnabends approval.106 These were humble objects, such as Carriola (wheelbarrow)
(plate 11) or Pettine e sandali (comb and sandals), whose combinatorial creativity evoked
the resourceful reuse of materials of shanty town bricoleurs. To a certain extent Gilardis
wheelbarrow prefigured Pascalis Attrezzi agricoli (agricultural tools) (plate 12), raw
434
Jacopo Galimberti
10 Piero Gilardi, Montagna

(Mountain), 1967. Expanded
polyurethane, 300 300 800
cm. Flaine: Private Collection.
Photo: Piero Gilardi.
11 Piero Gilardi, Carriola
(Wheelbarrow), 1967. Mixed
media, 60 70 120 cm. Work
now lost. Photo: Piero
Gilardi.
12 Pino Pascali, Attrezzi
agricoli (Agricultural tools),
1968. Hay, metal and wood,
dimensions variable. Rome:
Galleria nazionale darte
moderna e contemporanea
(courtesy of the Ministero
per i Beni e le Attivit
Culturali). Photo: Giuseppe
Schiavinotto.
wood implements which materialized Pascalis primitivist conviction that when

black people make objects they create a civilization.107
Sonnabends hostility obliged Gilardi to come to terms with the vexata quaestio of
artistic freedom in capitalist society. He decided to suspend the production of objects
and travelled to America, Amsterdam and Stockholm, becoming an original artistcritic-art correspondent of a type that can be retrospectively ascribed to conceptual
art.108 He became familiar with the work of artists such as Dennis Oppennheim,
Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Long, and those of the Bay Area. The discoveries
he made during these journeys were recounted in his articles published in three
languages in Arts Magazine, Bit, Flash Art, Pallone, Pianeta Fresco, Quindici, and Rohbo. Gilardi
recommended a trip to the Bay Area, owing to the political preoccupations of its
artists whom he deemed closer to Europeans.109 He also worked through the notion
of microemotive art, searching for a common denominator for artists including
Bruce Nauman, Merz, Long, Morris or Irving Shaw.110
In 1968, Gilardi realized that the works variously labelled anti-form art,
process-art, earth-works, and arte povera become increasingly accepted
by the establishment.111 At the same time he was fascinated by the emergence of
social movements which he considered to be inspired by the same values as these
works, but more convincingly rejecting the lures of the system. On the model of the
435
Parisian Atelier Populaire, he put art at the service of the movement, making political
posters in his studio. By and large, in 1968 he still believed in a horizontal plane,
in a proximity of art and politics distinct from the vertical logic that he noticed
in Marcuses interventions.112 However, in the latter part of the year the artist went
through a series of experiences that radicalized his position. Being one of the few
with first-hand knowledge of the pioneering European and North American artists
who had emerged since 196667, Gilardi played a key role in organizing two
landmark exhibitions: Op Losse Schroeven and Live in your Head: When Attitudes Become Forms.113
While in the former Wim Beeren acknowledged his endeavours and published his
text in the catalogue, in the Swiss exhibition Harald Szeemann and Gilardi had a
disagreement. The show was initially supposed to give artists a major role in its
organization, thus evoking the claim to self-management coming from the protest
movement. However, Gilardi has recalled: at the last minute, using the sponsors
claims (Philip Morris) as an excuse, [Szeemann] went back on his promise and
arranged the show with the New York commercial apparatus, chiefly Leo Castelli.
114
This occurred while the artists and gallery-owners tied to arte povera were gaining
an increasingly dominant position in Turin. In Gilardis view the Sperone entourage
was taking hold of the Deposito darte presente (warehouse of contemporary art), a
showcase anticipating Szeemanns and Beerens proposals, that he had struggled to
keep semi-public.115 Although Gilardi had originally been a fervent supporter of the
Deposito, in 1969 he and a group of activists stormed into it and damaged its facilities
in order to make manifest their dissent regarding the institutions policies.116 Among
them was Ugo Nespolo, author of Molotov (plate 13), a work that provocatively engaged
with the idea of an art in the service of the protest movement.
Gilardis letter to Bonfiglioli and Boarini illustrates his thoughts in January 1969.
The artist went through his work after Celant sent him a sort of private Arte Povera
manifesto in October 1967.117 He recounted the gradual commercialization of arte
povera, whose association of diverse artists was, he opined, a mystification made
in the interest of Celant, Sperone, and Sonnabend. From his Marxist perspective
American chauvinism was by now aware of Europes role in implementing a true
cultural imperialism; arte povera was simply the fruit of this overture. In the same
letter he set out his aims: participating in the revolutionary totality via grass-roots
13 Ugo Nespolo, Molotov,

1968. Mixed media, 600 200
150 cm. Work destroyed.
Photo: Ugo Nespolo.
436
Jacopo Galimberti
14 Piero Gilardi, Manicomio =

Lager (Asylum = Lager), 1969.
Screen print on paper, 100
70 cm. Turin: Collection of the
Artist. Photo: Piero Gilardi.
political work. Around 1969, while Boetti explored the

theme of the double, perhaps influenced by Basaglias
writings and the anti-psychiatric movement, Gilardi
joined the movement as a volunteer working in
asylums.118 A poster issued by his studio testifies that
he did not repudiate his artistic talent (plate 14). In the
first part of the 1970s, he would embrace Leninism,
joining Avanguardia Operaia, and espousing the cause
of factory workers. His militancy combined strictly
political activity with the organization of artistic
projects with non-professionals, including mural
paintings, political comics, banners and theatre plays
inspired by Augusto Boals Theatre of the Oppressed.
However, his indefatigable activism exposed his work
to mistakes of both a political and aesthetic nature. His
depiction of factory workers as virile and muscular was
rather stereotypical and unwittingly picked up on the
imagery of 1930s fascist posters, steeped in the cult of
work and Latin masculinity. Moreover, Gilardis work
tended to be oblivious to the female labour force and to
underestimate the transformation the Italian working
class was undergoing in a phase characterized by the
beginning of the decline of the Fordist factories.
Captured by the dynamism of grass-roots
political activity, Gilardi forgot that after 1968 he
had intended to change life in order to include art.
As he retrospectively argued, his identification with
the political creativity of the movement was dangerously all-consuming.119 The
separation from his wife, exasperated by the subordinated and dependent role to
which I had relegated her, pushed him to quit his full-time activism for several
months.120 Following this pause, he returned to what sociologist Erving Goffman
defined as total institutions, setting up a therapeutic artistic workshop in an
asylum.121 In the latter part of the 1970s, Gilardi tried to remain on the threshold
between art and international cultural promotion, working as an operatore culturale
(cultural operator) in Nicaragua, where he met Sandinista guerillas, Kenya, and
the Native American reservations of the US. At the outset of the following decade
Gilardi resumed his cooperation with art galleries. New Tappeti-natura were produced,
but this time to finance less marketable environmentalist and political projects,
such as the Jungian General Intellect or the monumental undertaking of the Parco darte
vivente in Turin.122 These are in turn inextricably linked to Gilardis collaborative
performances, notably those for May Day, and his ongoing activism, such as his
support of the anti-TAV movement.
Approaching Politics in the 1970s
Despite the third-worldist implications of arte povera, Celant did not call for an agitprop art. In the wake of the first university occupations, he hoped that the artists
he defended would become propagators of anti-establishment ideas modelled on
the leftist students strategies. Until September 1968 he posited the idea that artists
and critics should echo the seemingly mounting protest within the art world. His
position was similar to Guttusos, a painter who could not be further from arte povera,
437
in that both men envisaged complementarity between the engagement of artists and
activists. This approach clashed with the most politicized fringes of the student
movement, heralding the primacy of, or giving sole legitimacy to, documentary and
propaganda art. In 196768, Celant interrogated a set of assumptions concerning art,
art institutions and art critique, but did so from the pages of art magazines without
substantial connections with political groups. Yet in the mid-1970s he cooperated
with Massimo DAlessandro, one of the leaders of the extra-parliamentarian
organization Potere operaio (Worker power) and responsible for the art gallery
Arteper (197477).123 The critics political sympathies in the 1970s and how these
reverberated in his writings deserve further study.124
Unlike Celant, from the late 1960s Gilardi embraced some of the ethical urges
encapsulated by the notion of arte povera without limiting his action to the art world.
Siding with the exploited, whom Celant had initially considered among the ranks
of arte povera artists, Gilardi challenged some of the art worlds unwritten rules, such
as the need for art to keep politics at a safe distance. In an attempt to use his skills to
empower a public which should no longer exist as such, he instantiated an idea that
was at the core of arte poveras initial project. However, while ceasing to produce Tappetinatura or the objects he made around the close of the decade, he deprived himself of
the possibility of raising questions, or suggesting provisional solutions, which went
beyond the more immediate political contingencies. His artistic work for leftist
collectives was occasionally emphatic rather than stimulating diffused creativity,
as would be the case of the media-savvy Mao-dadaist component of the Autonomia
movement.125 Yet, this remained Gilardis first aim. Following the 1970s, Gilardi
became increasingly aware that new technologies could allow him to create works
which were much more interactive than his 1970s composite undertakings. His
1990s and 2000s projects are indeed arousing critical attention in Europe.126
Early 1970s far-left extra-parliamentarian organizations, such as Potere Operaio
and Lotta Continua (Continuous struggle), owned much to the student movement,
but unlike it they developed a perspective on art and culture that complicated the
1968 activists stance. Lotta Continua, in particular, believed that the struggle against
the docility of the trade unions, the reformism of the Italian Communist party, and,
not least, the risk of a right-wing coup, required a dialogue with the democratic
bourgeois intelligentsia and left-wing artists. Within this new set of alliances, artists
such as Zorio and Pistoletto donated works to Lotta Continua, whose initial meetings
took place in the same building as the Sperone Gallery.127 Moreover, between 1974
and 1976 Merz, Boetti, Anselmo, Fabro, Kounellis and Paolini had solo shows at
Area, one of the two art galleries opened up by Lotta Continua.128 Lotta Continuas
main figure responsible for the relationship with artists, Michele Guidugli, has
recently recalled that he had been receptive towards the political nuances of Celants
arte povera texts.129 By the mid-1970s a significant part of the far-left seemed to
appreciate that grass-roots activism and militant anti-fascism were not antithetical
to notions like arte povera. But what would have happened if student activists had
welcomed the dialogue Celant endeavoured to establish in late 1967? What would
have become of arte povera if Gilardis radicalism and Celants caution had found a
dialectical synthesis in late 1968? These questions will remain unanswered, but
one does have the feeling that, in addition to marking the beginning of a successful
career for a group of Italian artists, arte povera also encapsulates the memory of a
missed opportunity.
438
Jacopo Galimberti
Notes
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Proponeva unarte di guerriglia contro il mondo ricco, che lui

vedeva rappresentato da alcune correnti recenti, come il Nouveau
ralisme ... In seguito abbandon questa dimensione politica per
rendere larte povera una sorta di minimal-concettuale. Pierre
Restanys interview with Lucrezia De Domizio Durini (1992) in
Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, Pierre Restany: Leco del futuro, Milan, 2005,
63.
October, 124, Spring 2008; [in this October issue,] Nicholas Cullinans
From Vietnam to Fiatnam: The politics of arte povera does signal
Celants reorientation in the 1980s, but it fails to expatiate on arte
poveras ideological nuances and initial reception; Elisabeth Mangini,
Parallel revolution: Elisabeth on arte povera, Artforum, November
2007, 15962; Bettina Ruhrberg, Arte Povera. Zur Genese eines
Begriffs und zur Rezeption einer Bewegung, in Ingvild Goetz and
Christiane Meyer-Stoll, eds, Arbeiten und Dokumenten aus der Sammlung Goetz
1958 bis heute, Munich, 1997, 1727.
Loperaio che sciopera, lo studente che incendia le macchine e alza
le barricate e lintellettuale che collabora con ambedue. Germano
Celant, untitled, in Germano Celant, Arte povera azioni povere, Naples,
1969, 14. English text available from Germano Celant, Art Povera,
Milan, 1985, 889; The Knot: Arte Povera at the P. S. 1, P. S. 1, Long Island
City, 1985, 16.
Samantha Christiansen and Zachary Scarlett, eds, The Third World in
the Global 1960s, Oxford, 2012. In the 1960s, the term third world
had no derogatory connotations, and was used to describe countries
that did not align with NATO (the fi rst world) and the Eastern
bloc. With the supposed integration of the fi rst-world proletariat
into the capitalist status quo, the third-worldist components of the
western left considered the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist
struggles taking place in some of these countries to be the presage
of a global revolution. They felt not only that these struggles had to
be supported, but also that they provided useful models for the fi rstworld revolutionaries. In France, a proponent of tiers mondisme was
activist Franois Maspero, who also edited the magazine Rvolution. In
1960s Italy, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the founder of the publishing
house of the same name, had a partly similar agenda.
Listas influential analysis, for example, does not explore this link.
Giovanni Lista, Arte Povera, Milan, 2006.
Diego Giachetti, Il giorno pi lungo. La rivolta di corso Traiano, Pisa, 1997.
Carla Lonzi, Confronto. Cinque pittori torinesi, Collage, 7, May 1967,
44.
Germano Celant, untitled, in Lo spazio dellimmagine, Foligno, Palazzo
Trinci, 1967, 1922.
Germano Celant, Im spazio. Possibili punti di scambio tra ricerca
architettonica e ricerca formale, Casabella, 318, September 1967, 613;
see also Germano Celant, Lo Spazio dellimmagine, Bit, 1: 4, July
1967, 11.
Celant was among the curators of Forme programmate, Turin, Castello del
Valentino, 1965. The notion of im spazio was arguably an attempt to
move beyond the concept of arte programmata, devised by art critic and
historian Giulio Carlo Argan in 1963.
Germano Celant, Precronistoria 19661969, Florence, 1976.
Robert Lumley, Space of arte povera, in Richard Flood and Frances
Morris, eds, Zero to Infi nity: Arte Povera 19621972, Minneapolis, MN,
London, Walker Art Centre, Tate Modern, 2001, 4165.
Tommaso Trini, Divertimentifici, Domus, 458, January 1968, 12. For
the connections between arte povera and design, see Romi Golan,
Eclissi: arte italiana negli anni sessanta, in Gabriele Guercio and
Anna Mattirolo, eds, Il confi ne evanescente. Arte italiana 19602000, Milan,
2010, 94100.
Carlo Guenzi, Germano Celant, Nuove tecniche dimmagine,
Casabella, 319, October 1967, 5962. This article is divided into
two sections; the section written by Celant is entitled Arte ricca e
arte povera. Since the San Marino Biennale opened on 15 July and
Arte povera Im Spazio (La Bertesca gallery, 2nd30th October) is not
mentioned in the Casabella text, it is likely that Celants article was
written earlier than his essay for the show at La Bertesca.
Carlo Guenzi, Germano Celant, Nuove tecniche dimmagine,
5962.
Limmagine della nostra paura ideologica, la realizzazione di un
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
artigianato concettuale in serie, mediato attraverso un artigianato

artistico. Le sagome squadrate e piatte, differenti e differenziate,
procedono compatte. Lomogeneit ideologica crea lomogeneit
comportamentistica. In Cina luomo da noi la macchina, il sistema
lo stesso, cambia il fi ne, Ceroli come noi, tiene per luomo. Carlo
Guenzi, Germano Celant, Nuove tecniche, 62.
An introduction to Italian Maoism can be found in Stefano Ferrante,
La Cina non era vicina. Servire il popolo e il maoismo allitaliana, Milan,
2008.
The notion of im spazio was exemplified by the work of Umberto
Bignardi, Ceroli, Paolo Icaro, Renato Mambor, Eliseo Mattiacci, and
Cesare Tacchi; arte povera was represented by Boetti, Fabro, Kounellis,
Pascali, Paolini, and Prini.
Text translated in Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, ed., Arte Povera, New
York, 2201.
Celant, Art Povera, 303; Arte Povera: Art from Italy 19672002, Sydney,
2002, 26.
Germano Celant, Arte Povera, DArs Agency, 38-39, OctoberNovember, 1967, 133-5.
Germano Celant, Appunti per unarte di guerriglia, Flash Art, 5,
NovemberDecember 1967, 3. There are several translations of this
text; the one used here is provided by the Flash Art website http://
www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=articolo_det&id_
art=352&det=ok&title=ARTE-POVERA (accessed 1 December 2011).
Getulio Alviani, Bignardi, Agostino Bonalumi, Davide Boriani,
Enrico Castellani, Ceroli, Gianni Colombo, Gabriele De Vecchi, Icaro,
Gino Marotta, Aldo Mondino, Nespolo, Paolo Scheggi, Gianni Emilio
Simonetti, Tacchi.
Interview with Piero Gilardi, 3 February 2010.
Interview with Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1 April 2010.
The date of the texts composition is stated at the end of the article.
Collage 1, Genoa, Istituto di Storia dellarte, December 1967; Guido
Viale, Il 68. Tra rivoluzione e restaurazione, Rimini, 2008, 36. The positive
reaction of the students was recalled in the interviews Pistoletto and
Zorio had with the author, 1 April 2010 and 3 February 2011.
It involved Alviani, Anselmo, Boetti, Fabro, Merz, Mondino,
Nespolo, Piacentino, Pistoletto, Scheggi, Simonetti, and Zorio.
Daniela Palazzoli, Con temp lazione, in Germano Celant, Art Povera,
1985, 41, translation slightly modified by the author.
Daniela Palazzoli, Con temp lazione, 41, translation slightly
modified by the author.
Germano Celant, Una rivoluzione in serie, Bit, 1: 6, December, 11.
Per una rivoluzione culturale permamente, in ogni luogo, in ogni
momento, con ogni mezzo, ma perch parlare delle armi in casa,
meglio usarle. Luomo reale (Marx) si fa, non lo si descrive. Noi
siamo per la guerriglia!, Germano Celant, Una rivoluzione in serie.
Bit, 1: 6, December, 1.
In summer 1967 the Parisian Salon de Mai took place in Cuba, the
exhibition was subtitled Pintores y Guerrila. It is unknown whether
Celant knew this. For this event, see Dina Scoppetone, The Salon
de Mai in Cuba and the Mural Colectiva, 1967, MA thesis, the Courtauld
Institute of Art, London, 1998. For Italy, see Umberto Eco, Towards
a semiological guerilla warfare, in Travels in Hypereality. Essays, trans.
William Weaver, San Diego, CA, 1986, 13544; the essay resulted
from a talk delivered at the New York conference Vision 67 in
October 1967. Some commentators remarked that guerilla was
becoming a buzz word just as alienation had been at the beginning
of the decade; Enrico Filippini, Tensioni tedesche, Quindici, 6, 15
November15 December 1967, 1. Subsequent attempts to link art and
guerilla warfare stemmed from Latin American artists, Julio Le Parcs
Guerrilla culturelle, Robho, 3, Spring 1968, n.p. (text dating from
early 1968).
Internationaler Vietnam-Kongre, Hamburg, 1968, 105.
Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution? Armed Struggle and Political Struggle
in Latin America, trans. Bobby Ortiz, New York and London, 1967;
Quaderni Piacentini, 31, July 1967; this issue was entirely devoted to
Imperialism and revolution in Latin America.
Fredric Jameson, Periodising the 1960s, in Stanley Aronowitz,
Fredric Jameson, Sohnya Sayres and Anders Stephanson, eds, The
Sixties without Apology, Minneapolis, MN, 1984, 202.
Wolfgang Dressen, Dieter Kunzelmann and Eckhard Siepmann, eds,
439
Nilpferd des Hllischen Urwalds, Berlin, 1991, 20613.

39 linvenzione (strategica, tattica), oggi, la guerra di guerriglia da
invenzione contadina diventata uno strumento di lotta urbano,
nelle citt industriali, anonymous, I colonizzati della terra, Che Fare,
2, November 1967, 378.
40 S, 3, 2 in Quindici, 7, 15 January15 February 1968, n. p.
41 LInternationale Situationniste en Italie approuve seulement le
courant radical qui sest manifest lors de loccupation de lUniversit
de Turin. Guy Debords letter to the Turin group translating De la
Misere en milieu tudiant into Italian (dated 1 February 1968) in Guy
Debord, Correspondance, vol. 3, Paris, 2003, 268.
42 Anonymous, Le tesi della Sapienza, Il Mulino, 56, MayJune 1967,
37591.
43 Umberto Eco, The death of Gruppo 63, in Umberto Eco, The Open
Work, trans. Anna Cancogni, Cambridge MA, 1989, 248.
44 Interview with Piero Gilardi, 3 February 2010. This association
addressed themes at times remarkably close to those of Celants
articles. In May 1967 the Unione Culturale hosted a Living Theatre
performance, in December it showed a Warhol fi lm, and in January
1968 it organized a round-table concerning the Sick University;
Archive of the Unione Culturale Franco Antonicelli.
45 Giovanni Lista, Arte Povera.
46 Gilardis unpublished letter to Bonfiglioli and Boarini (25 January
1969), Gilardis archive.
47 La povert dellarte, Bologna, 1968, n. p. This book collects the
interventions, which were written between February and June
1968; Celant, Art Povera, reproduces only the translation of Celants,
Barillis and Bonfigliolis texts, 4865; see also Germano Celants
contemporary text, La giovane scultura italiana, Casabella, 322,
January 1968, 467.
48 Pietro Bonfiglioli, Art and life, in Celant, Art Povera, 625, translation
slightly modified by the author.
49 Pietro Bonfiglioli, Art and life, 65, translation slightly modified by
the author.
50 La povert dellarte, n. p.
51 La povert dellarte, n. p.
52 La povert dellarte, n. p. Guttusos text is partly translated in Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev, Arte, 1978.
53 Un collegamento preciso, nel mondo extrartistico, con gli attuali
movimenti di lotta radicale al sistema capitalistico-borghese,
Giuseppe DAgata, Arte povera a Bologna, Cartabianca, 1, May 1968,
1921.
54 Gabriele Peretta, Larte, gli artisti e il 68, Flash Art, 147, December
1988January 1989, 72.
55 J. Stuart Hilwig, Italy and 1968: Youthful Unrest and Democratic Culture,
Basingstoke, 2009, 20.
56 Alessandro Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of
Dialogue, Madison, WI, 1997.
57 J. Stuart Hilwig, Italy, 56.
58 Gli studenti hanno affrontato le forze dellordine sbaragliandole
e cacciandole dal campus universitario hanno dimostrato che
la guerriglia possibile. Lo scontro pi violento avvenuto di
fronte al museo darte contemporanea. Questo scontro destinato a
passare alla storia della cultura italiana perch ha creato una precisa
dicotomia fra coloro che si sono battuti sulla piazza, armi alla mano,
e coloro che si battono per avere qualche metro di parete nelle sale
del museo, anonymous, Note, notizie, lodi e delazioni, Bit, 2: 1,
April 1968, 40.
59 il movimento studentesco come ideale compagno per una
piattoforma ideologica comune di agitazione, document reproduced
in Bit, 2: 1, April 1968, 20.
60 Leonardo Passarelli, Intorno al 68. Al servizio del capitale o della
rivoluzione?, in Cristina Casero and Elena di Raddo, eds, Anni 70:
larte dellimpegno. I nuovi orizzonti culturali ideologici e sociali nellarte italiana,
Milan, 2009, 89112; Paola Nicolin, Castelli di carte. La XIV Triennale di
Milano, 1968, Macerata, 2011.
61 Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Milano Triennale 68: A case study and beyond.
Arata Isozakis Electronic Labyrinth, a Ma of Images?, in Bruno
Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Iconoclash, Karlsruhe, 2002, 36088.
62 Interview with Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1 April 2010.
63 Michelangelo Pistoletto, A Minus Artist, Florence, 1989, 801.
64 Michel Wlassikof, Laffiche en hritage, Paris, 2008;Johan Kugelberg and

Philippe Verms, eds, Beauty is in the Street: A Visual Record of the May 68
Paris Uprising, London, 2011.
65 Mentre un operaio e uno studente sono defi niti dalla loro
appartenenza [a una categoria], essere artisti non coincide con
liscrizione a un sindacato, Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto, Bari, 2301.
66 per lartista non c identificazione in questa societ o in altra societ
ipotizzabile, perch una sua capacit il non identificarsi con la
struttura sociale, Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto, 2301.
67 ci hanno preso per gente venuta dalla luna. Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto,
230.
68 Wladimiro Dorigo, La contestazione delle manifestazioni e il
problema della trasformazione della Biennale, Questitalia, 34,
AugustSeptember 1968, 69102.
69 ASAC-Fondo storico, fi le XXXIV Biennale 1968.
70 Daniela Palazzoli, Diecimila stambecchi del gran paradiso vogliono
uscire dalla riserve, Bit, 2: 3, June 1968, 39.
71 ASAC-Fondo storico, fi le XXXIV Biennale 1968.
72 Bit, 2: 3, June 1968, 36, 38.
73 Ora potresti esporre le tue opere soltanto sotto una ignominiosa
tutela dei poliziotti esponendo ti inseriresti nel processo di
autodifesa di questo sistema. Al contrario rifiutando di esporre,
qualificheresti la tua figura di intellettuale e daresti il tuo contributo
alla nascita di un dialogo tra le forze dellArte, ASAC-Fondo storico,
fi le XXXIV Biennale 1968 (document dated 13 June).
74 Interview with Pistoletto, 1 April 2010.
75 Pistoletto, A Minus Artist, 77, translation slightly modified.
76 Interview with Pistoletto, 1 April 2010.
77 Pistoletto, A Minus Artist, 7981.
78 Interview with Toni Negri, 29 March 2010.
79 Interview with Tommaso Trini, 30 March 2010.
80 Celant, Art Povera, 1985, 73.
81 Celant, Art Povera, 1985, 735, translation slightly modified by the
author.
82 Germano Celant A grey-green Biennale, Casabella, 327, June 1968,
523.
83 Celant, A grey-green Biennale, 523.
84 The recording is in Tommaso Trinis archive.
85 See also Germano Celant, Critica come evento, Cartabianca, 2,
November 1968, 1416.
86 Originally published in Celant, Arte povera azioni povere. English text
available in Celant, Art Povera, 889. Translation slightly modified by
the author.
87 Anonymous, Fontana, Art et Cration, 1: 1, 1968, 78.
88 Luc Boltanski and ve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans.
Gregory Elliott, London, 2007, 167215, 41982.
89 This was, for example, Boattos position at the Cartabianca editorial
team meeting. The recording is in Tommaso Trinis archive.
90 Germano Celant, Per una Biennale apolide, Casabella, 328, September
1968, 526.
91 Christopher G. Bennett, Substantive thoughts? The early works of
Alighiero Boetti, October, 124, Spring 2008, 7597.
92 Tommaso Trini, Rapporto da Amalfi, Domus, 468, November 1968,
5.
93 www.pistoletto.it/it/testi/le_ultime_parole_famose.pdf (accessed
29 October 2010).
94 Celant, Arte povera azioni, 66.
95 il discorso politico non mi interessa, mi interessa non fare politica,
ma vivere in politica, Celant, Arte povera azioni, 53.
96 The Tlatelolco massacre (2 October 1968) was a government
massacre of students and protesters that took place in the Plaza de las
Tres Culturas in Mexico City. The death toll probably exceeded 1,000,
but the exact figures are still debated. See Elena Poniatowska, Massacre
in Mexico, trans. Helen R. Lane, New York, 1975.
97 Interview with Piero Gilardi, 3 February 2010; Piero Gilardi, The
experience of Amalfi, translated in Celant, Art Povera, 905.
98 I miei scritti sono attivi e strategici la critica deve
rinunciare alla sua funzione di azione giudicatrice dei valori, ma
deve essa stessa produrre valori, elementi di discussione, deve cio
diventare opera di strategia, in Germano Celant, La critica come
opera di strategia e di metodologia, in Giuseppe Bartolucci, ed., La
440
Jacopo Galimberti
scrittura scenica, Rome, 1968, 287; Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations

and Other Essays, New York, 1966. Mondadori published this book in
Italian in 1967.
99 Germano Celant, Art Povera: Conceptual, Actual or Impossible Art?, London
and New York, 1969.
100 Celant, Art Povera, 23.
101 Rachel Haidu, The Absence of Work: Marcel Broodthaers, 19641976,
Cambridge, MA, 2010; Jacopo Galimberti, Antonio Recalcati e il
1968. Alcune riflessioni intorno a una mostra, LUomo Nero, 78,
September 2011, 31320.
102 Germano Celant, ed., Arte Povera 2011, Turin, Milan, Bologna, Rome,
Naples, Bari, Bergamo, 201112; Christov-Bakargiev, Arte; Flood and
Morris, Zero to Infi nity; Friedmann Malsch, Christine Meyer-Stoll and
Valentina Pero, eds, Che Fare? Arte Povera the Historic Years, Vaduz, 2010.
103 Originally published in Celant, Arte povera azioni povere. English text
available in Celant, Art Povera, 889.
104 Piero Gilardi, Dallarte alla vita, dalla vita allarte. Il percorso artistico, politico e
umano dellesperienza transculturale cominciata nel 68, Milan, 1982, 11.
105 Both Gilberto Zorio and Ugo Nespolo confi rmed the pivotal role
of this library (interviews dated 3 February 2011); Lara Conte also
mentions Paolini, see Lara Conte, Materia, corpo, azione. Ricerche artistiche
processuali tra Europa e Stati Uniti, Milan, 2010, 243-253; Simona Tobia,
Advertising America: The United States Information Service in Italy (19451956),
Milan, 2008.
106 Piero Gilardi, Dallarte, 11.
107 I negri, quando fanno gli oggetti, creano una civilt, Carla Lonzi,
Autoritratto, 245.
108 As Gilardi noted, there are similarities between his activity and what
Nicolas Bourriaud called relational art; Piero Gilardi, Not for Sale. Alla
ricerca dellarte relazionale, Milan, 2000.
109 Gilardis unpublished letter to Bit (dated November 1968). Piero
Gilardis archive.
110 Piero Gilardi, Primary energy and the microemotive artists, Arts
Magazine, 43: 1, September/October, 1968, 4851.
112 Gilardis unpublished letter to Bonfiglioli and Boarini (25 January
1969), Gilardis archive; Marcuses Art in the one-dimensional
society, Arts Magazine, 41: 7, May 1967, 2631.
113 Temporary artistic communities. Piero Gilardi in conversation with
Francesco Manacorda, in Christian Rattemeyer, ed., Exhibiting New Art:
Op Losse Schroeven and When Attitudes Become Form 1969, London, 2010,
2309.
114 Allultimo momento, accampando a pretesto le pressioni dello
sponsor, la Philip Morris, si rimangi la parola data e contratt la
mostra con lapparato mercantile new yorkese, Leo Castelli in testa,
Piero Gilardi, Dallarte, 12; Piero Gilardi, Le contrle idologique de
lavant-garde, Robho, 5/6, 1971, 52.
115 Gilardis letter to Marcello Levi (dated 26 December 1968), Gilardi
archive; Robert Lumley, Arte povera a Torino: lintrigante caso
del Deposito Darte Presente, in Marcello Levi. Ritratto di un collezionista,
London, 2005, 1938.
116 Paolo Thea, Larte povera come operazione, in Paolo Thea and
Marco Meneguzzo, eds, Verso larte povera, Milan, 1989, 39.
117 Gilardis letter to Bonfiglioli and Boarini (25 January 1969), Gilardis
archive.
118 Piero Gilardi, Dallarte, 13; Franco Basaglia, Listituzione negata. Rapporto
da un ospedale psichiatrico, Milan, 1968. In 1968 the leading psychiatrist
Basaglia was invited to a debate at the Unione Culturale in Turin.
120 Esasperata per il ruolo subordinato e dipendente nel quale lavevo fi n
dallinizio relegata, Piero Gilardi, Dallarte, 14.
121 Erving Goffman, Asylum: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and
Other Inmates, New York, 1961.
122 Angela Vettese, ed., Piero Gilardi: Interdipendenze/Interdependence, Modena,
2006.
123 From an interview Fabio Belloni had with Massimo DAlessandro. I
would like to thank Fabio for this information.
124 See also Politica e arte, Data, 2, February 1972, 72.
125 Klemens Gruber, Die Zerstreute Avantgarde. Strategische Kommunikation im
Italien der 70er Jahre, Vienna and Cologne, 1989.
126 See, for example, Andrea Bellini and Diana Franssen, eds, Piero Gilardi,
Collaborative Effects, Turin, Eindhoven, Nottingham, 201213; and

the trilingual monograph Lionel Bovier, Clment Diri and Benot
Porche, eds, Piero Gilardi, Zurich, 2011.
127 Interviews with Pistoletto and Gilberto Zorio, 1 April 2010 and
3 February 2011; Aldo Cazzullo, I ragazzi che volevano fare la rivoluzione.
19681978: storia di Lotta Continua, Milan, 1998, 88.
128 Memoria Ribelle. Addio Lugano bella, Naples, 2006.
129 Interview with Michele Guidugli, 22 October 2011.
441

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A Third-worldist Art?

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

Detail from Mario Ceroli, La

Association of Art Historians 2013

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

be separated from an investigation of the relationship between the social upheavals

1 Mario Ceroli, La Cina

Association of Art Historians 2013

Following the distribution of Jerzy Grotowskis manifesto, Towards a Poor Theatre, in

or pop encouraged the public to participate in the creation of an open space. In

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

2 Poster issued on the

Association of Art Historians 2013

called for the advent of a guerillero, subverting the

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

3 Giancarlo de Carlo, Marco

4 Carabinieri patrolling the

Association of Art Historians 2013

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

5 Artists face the police in

Association of Art Historians 2013

6 Tommaso Trini in Piazza

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

7 Works covered in a sign of

Association of Art Historians 2013

8 Pino Pascali and Mario de

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

9 Piero Gilardi, Sassi

Association of Art Historians 2013

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

would later relinquish this international tenor in order

10 Piero Gilardi, Montagna

Association of Art Historians 2013

wood implements which materialized Pascalis primitivist conviction that when

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

13 Ugo Nespolo, Molotov,

Association of Art Historians 2013

14 Piero Gilardi, Manicomio =

political work. Around 1969, while Boetti explored the

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

Association of Art Historians 2013

Proponeva unarte di guerriglia contro il mondo ricco, che lui

Association of Art Historians 2013

artigianato concettuale in serie, mediato attraverso un artigianato

Germano Celants Invention of Arte Povera

Nilpferd des Hllischen Urwalds, Berlin, 1991, 20613.

Association of Art Historians 2013

64 Michel Wlassikof, Laffiche en hritage, Paris, 2008;Johan Kugelberg and

scrittura scenica, Rome, 1968, 287; Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations

Association of Art Historians 2013

Collaborative Effects, Turin, Eindhoven, Nottingham, 201213; and

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