A major survey of Arte Povera will open next autumn at the Bourse de Commerce (Pinault Collection) in Paris (25 September 2024-24 March 2025) organised by the leading curator and outgoing director of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Turin, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.
“The exhibition… intends to retrace both the Italian birth and the international influence of the movement, through a large collection of major works by thirteen main protagonists of Arte Povera,” a statement from the Bourse de Commerce says.
The exhibition will include works from the “important Arte Povera collection at the Pinault Collection” along with “exceptional loans” from the Castello di Rivoli. “The exhibition will also welcome loans from several other major public and private collections, both French and Italian, including [from the] Arte Povera artists themselves,” the statement adds.
Artists represented in the forthcoming display include Giovanni Anselmo, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Jannis Kounellis, Marisa and Mario Merz and Giulio Paolini. Works by Alighiero Boetti will also be shown (works in the Pinault Collection by Boetti include Catasta, 1967, a structure comprising twelve fibre cement square section bars arranged in a regular grid pattern).
The Bourse de Commerce website states that Arte Povera artists "moved from one technique to another without concern for a distinctive style and adopted everyday practices to shape humble materials, natural or artificial, into works of art that generated experiences [for] the public".
Last month, the Italian curator Francesco Manacorda was appointed director of the Castello di Rivoli, one of Italy’s most influential contemporary art institutions. He takes up the role next January, replacing Christov-Bakargiev, who has been in post since 2016.
The art critic Germano Celant, known for his championing of the Arte Povera movement, died of Covid-19 in the San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, in 2020.