"Arte Povera, Notes for History"

After several experiences in the field of art documentary, with the biographies of Cy Twombly, Piero Manzoni and Fabio Mauri and the film Swinging Roma set in the 60s of the capital, I decided to shift my gaze to the Arte Povera movement which developed at the end of the 60s especially between Turin and Rome.
As in the case of Swinging Roma, I am always fascinated by how suddenly, in an apparently almost random way, some cities generate an innovative and powerful cultural and social life. It is almost as if we were witnessing a sudden and uncontainable chemical reaction that surprises and shakes a panorama that had been unknown or ignored until then.
How, the co-presence in the urban fabric of some places - in this specific case the "enlightened" galleries of Gian Enzo Sperone and Christiane Stein in Turin and of Fabio Sargentini in Rome - and of people with a strong charisma - above all Germano Celant - is able , with a mechanism that is difficult to plan or predict, not only to bring together artists and intellectuals animated by the desire for change, but even to create a recipe capable of transcending time and producing an echo that is still loud and relevant today as in the case of Arte Povera .
A movement/non-movement that with its ideas has profoundly marked not only the history of art of the time, but also that of the present, showing new avenues of research to young generations of artists from all over the world. The last true avant-garde of the 20th century, still relevant today in its approach to art not as a producer of objects, but as an affirmation of experiences and critical awareness of the present.
In light of all this, I was interested in the fact that the roots and generating atmospheres of such a particular movement, with important political and social implications also linked to time, were narrated by the protagonists themselves in the first person. Therefore, not cold historical-critical rereadings, but living testimonies that convey the vibrations of the time.
And for the first time all the living artists of the movement have agreed to tell and tell their stories in a continuous conversation on the meaning of Art and Life which turns from the past towards the future.
Not only the testimonies of the artists, but also of those who shared a long stretch of life with them: family members, gallery owners, friends.
Here then are Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Gilberto Zorio, Pier Paolo Calzolari and the voice of Giovanni Anselmo, Jannis Kounellis' partner Michelle Coudray, Beatrice Merz daughter of Mario and Marisa and Silvia Fabro daughter of Luciano, the gallery owners/accomplices Tucci Russo, Lia Rumma, Fabio Sargentini and Gianfranco Benedetti, friends/photographers Paolo Mussat Sartor and Giorgio Colombo.
Finally, Germano Celant, the great weaver of the movement's fortunes, through an unpublished interview conducted in 2019 in Venice at the Prada Foundation on the occasion of the first Jannis Kounellis retrospective.
All in a story that, although supported by a voice-over that takes up the key dates of the artistic development of Arte Povera, develops in a dynamic and warm flow of atmospheres and emotions not rigidly linked to chronology.
The story begins with the publication in the magazine Flash Art in November 1967 of the writing: Arte Povera: notes for a guerrilla war, where Celant theorises the guiding principles of the movement. To then continue with the first exhibition held at the La Bertesca gallery in Genoa and the following one in Bologna at the De Foscherari Gallery. These are the two exhibitions that in some way define the group of artists participating in the movement.
We then move on to address the artistic-cultural climate of the city of Turin where the majority of artists come from and where there are galleries that immediately embrace new art. We also introduce Rome, where Jannis Kounelli and Pino Pascali come from and where the visionary gallerist Fabio Sargentini works.
The story continues with the protest at the 1968 Venice Biennale and the subsequent Amalfi exhibition Arte Povera + Azioni Povere, fundamental for the development of the movement.
Finally, the exit from Italian territory and the triumph in European museums and galleries, and the end in 1972 of a movement that was too heterogeneous to survive the test of time.
5 crazy and engaging years followed in 1985 by the exhibition The Knot at Ps1 in New York, where Celant, faced with the ebb of the market, reiterated the importance of Arte Povera by challenging the dictates of the market in the capital of the Empire.
With the Knot exhibition, Arte Povera is established as the most important European movement of the end of the 20th century. A movement that brings with it a legacy that is still very present in the contemporary panorama.