Arte Povera

Arte Povera (or Art Povera). Term (Italian for ‘poor’ or ‘impoverished art') coined in 1967 by the Italian critic Germano Celant to describe a type of work, related to Conceptual and Minimal art, in which the materials used—such as soil, twigs, and newspaper—are deliberately chosen for their ‘worthlessness’ as a reaction against the commercialization of the art world. Celant organized several exhibitions on the theme, and in 1969 edited a book entitled Arte Povera (it was translated into English the same year as Art Povera: Conceptual, Actual or Impossible Art?). In this volume he offered various alternative names for the trend or movement, including Actual Art, Impossible Art, Micro-emotive Art, Raw Materialist Art, and Anti-Form. According to Celant, ‘Arte Povera expresses an approach to art which is basically anti-commercial, precarious, banal and anti-formal, concerned primarily with the physical qualities of the medium and the mutability of the materials. Its importance lies in the artists' engagement with actual materials and with total reality and their attempt to interpret that reality in a way which, although hard to understand, is subtle, cerebral, elusive, private, intense.’ Although this does not get one very far, it is lucid compared with most writing on Arte Povera, and the term has been used in a bewilderingly diffuse way. It has been applied to Happenings, installations, and Land art, for example, and to the work of many non-Italian artists, including Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Richard Long, and Robert Morris. Among the Italian (or Italian-based) artists who are regarded as leading figures in the movement are Jannis Kounnelis and Mario Merz (1925–2003). Merz's most characteristic works include ‘igloos’ constructed of metal armatures covered in nets, mud, twigs, and so on, often incorporating neon lighting and sometimes enclosed within an outer structure of metal and glass—a double igloo (Double Igloo, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, 1968–81). Far from the anti-commercial ethos envisaged by Celant, such works patently take a good deal of time, trouble, and money to produce, and dealers have shown that even much more casual examples of Arte Povera can be commercially exploited.

Edward Lucie-Smith (Art Today, 1995) writes that ‘The appearance of Arte Povera had a liberating effect on artists … It made it clear that it was now possible to use any kind of material, in any way the artist liked, to create something which could be convincingly described as art.’ Elsewhere Arte Povera has been described as ‘poor art, of poor materials, in exultation of a poor life'.