HappenArt

Michelangelo Pistoletto
Visual artist
Location: Italy

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1933. He began exhibiting his work in 1955. In 1960 he had his first personal exhibition at the Galleria Galatea in Turin. An investigation of the self-portrait characterizes his early work. During the two-year period 1961-1962, the first mirror paintings, which directly include the viewer and real time in the work. Open the perspective, reversing the perspective of the Renaissance that had been closed by the avant-gardes of the 20th century.

60’s.

These works soon brought Pistoletto international fame. Leading, in the sixties, to personal exhibitions in important galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. The Mirror Paintings are the basis of his later artistic production and theoretical thought.

In 1967, he won the first prize at the São Paulo Biennial, following this, the same year, he widened his field of vision by trying his hand at video art, theater and performance.

Venus with rags.

This work shows us the influence of Arte Povera on Michelangelo Pistoletto, indeed, the artist offers us a Venus revisited with so-called “poor” materials such as rags.

Recently Pistolleto to invent a sign, which takes up the mathematical sign of infinity by diverting it. He sees there his utopia, his vision of the world, this sign drawn with a continuous line calls to find a unity between Man and nature, masculine and feminine, individual and society. In particular, he remains with this sign one of the only artists who thinks that Art can and must change the world.