The beautiful spaces of Magazzino Italian Art are getting prepped for a busy 2020 with lots of exhibitions in store of us. Highlights of the season are for sure a dense dialogue between Twentieth-century great Masters and emerging artists, all differently connected with the Italian movement: Arte Povera.
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For those who don't know, Magazzino Italian Art is an exhibition space founded by Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu with the aim of promoting knowledge of Italian art in the USA. All around the year they organized different kinds of events like exhibitions, seminars, conferences, performances and publications, in collaboration with cultural institutions, art galleries, museums and collectors. The latest news is related to the current exhibition dedicated to the Arte Povera in which new works by Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Mario Merz e Giuseppe Penone will be displayed. As stated by Vittorio Calabrese (Magazzino director): "We have carefully planned the 2020 program with the aim of observing Arte Povera and Italian contemporary art through a global lens, in the hope of inspiring new perspectives and critical ideas".
On April 24, 2020, in collaboration with Rizzoli Bookstore, Magazzino will present also "5468 Days": a new monograph that collects a selection of over 60 works created from 2004 to 2019 by the Italian artist Francesco Arena. Then, on May 5, 2020, Magazzino Italian Art will open a personal exhibition of Namsal Siedlecki at the spaces of Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò, continuing a collaboration that has lasted for four years now. Born in 1986 in the United States and resident for years in Tuscany, in Seggiano, Siedlecki won the GAMeC Prize Club in 2019, making himself appreciated for his ability to integrate sculpture practices, updating them with the needs of the contemporary. The exhibition promoted by Magazzino includes a selection of sculptural canvases, made with the calcium formed in some caves in France, in addition to the results of his research in the field of the production of synthetic rubies and replicating forms reproduced in nature.
From left to right: Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1959, oil on canvas, 35 7/8 x 35 7/8 x 3/4 in. (90.8 x 90.8 x 1.9 cm). Photo by Marco Anelli. Courtesy the Olnick Spanu Collection. | Mel Bochner, Meditation on the Theorem of Pythagoras, 1977, Murano glass on floor, 170 x 160 in. (431.8 x 406.4 cm). Courtesy the artist.
For summer, on June 13, 2020, Magazzino Italian Art will present an unprecedented comparison between the works of Mel Bochner, one of the top figures of the American Conceptual, and those of Alighiero Boetti and Lucio Fontana, two recognized champions of Italian art. Bochner has lived in Italy for several years, bringing in unique suggestions and experiences with him. For example, Meditation on the Theorem of Pythagoras, a sculpture created in 1977 by Bochner for the Fontana’s Lights series, is composed of fragments of Murano glass recovered in Lucio Fontana's studio in Milan.
The autumn season will flag off with an exhibition with the Cultural Italian Institute of New York dedicated to the Multiple created by Arte Povera artists. The reason is historical... in the early 70s, Giorgio Persano, in his Turin gallery commissioned and exhibited, a series of multiples in limited edition, by Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio, Marco Gastini, Giorgio Griffa and Salvo. That occasion marked a methodological turning point for Arte Povera. On the present exhibition titled "Arte Povera e Multipli, Turin 1970-1975" which is curated by Elena Re, the institution will present a selection of works and archival material. Furthermore, the show will be at the centre of a large cycle of conferences involving scholars from all over the world, in order to discuss the paradigms of globalism and internationalism of the Italian artistic movement, through some exemplary cases - Ezio Gribaudo, Pino Pascali, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jannis Kounellis -, between politics and copper.