A Poor Art

With “A poor art”, a multidisciplinary and innovative event, the Centre Pompidou proposes to examine artistic practices tied to the question of “poor” in the creation in the 1960s: in the visual arts, with the eminence of current Arte Povera, in the field of music, design, architecture, theater, performance and experimental film.

Attentive to the signs, the reliefs, the most basic manifestations of life, the artists of the Arte Povera and more broadly of “poor art” claiming archaic gestures. The materials they use are often natural and recovery. The willingness of these artists is not to make gold out of straw or rags, but to activate a new symbolic power of the materials. This form of recycling takes less than a credo that a practice, originally in opposition to the American pop art and minimalism. The Arte Povera appears emulation, not membership. Two obvious however announce its birth in 1967, one critic Germano Celant, who coined the phrase; another artist Alighiero Boetti creates his poster Manifesto compiling a list of sixteen names, some known, some since forgotten, others that it is surprising to see included.
This event is based on all components of the Centre Pompidou, the richness and breadth of his collection that preserves one of the sets Arte Povera the largest in the world. It traces the decade 1964-1974, as well as notable year 1960 and later a few exceptions. It reveals the diversity of current through forty works of its main figures and other artists less known to have pioneered: Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Mario Ceroli, Luciano Fabro, Piero Gilardi Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio. As host, the exhibition brings together three figures of Italian art after the war: Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and work of Mario Merz of 1960. Then unfold the major concerns of the movement: tautology, writing, speaking, vital energy, the animal, shelter … Upon entry in the Forum of the Centre Pompidou, the Fibonacci Crocodilus (1972) Merz calls the visitor.