Lugano
Premiered on Wednesday 1 November 2023 at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, the docufilm Arte Povera, appunti per la storia will be aired on Tuesday 28th November, 2023 at 9.15 pm on the Italian television channel Sky Arte and on demand.
Produced by Michele Bongiorno’s Good Day Films and directed by Andrea Bettinetti, the film reveals the innovative perspectives and strong impact that the 12 artists linked to the Arte Povera movement have had on the Italian art scene, presenting the artists’ studios, foundations, institutions, galleries and museums exhibiting the most important collections worldwide. Arte Povera, notes for history presents an unpublished conversation with Germano Celant made in 2019 at the Fondazione Prada in Ca’ Corner in Venice, and interviews with Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelle Coudray, Lia Rumma, Antonio Tucci Russo, Fabio Sargentini, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Beatrice Merz, Silvia Fabro, Paolo Mussat Sartor, Gianfranco Benedetti and Giorgio Colombo.
“First comes man then the system, that’s how it used to be. Today it is society that produces and man that consumes. Everyone can criticise, rape, demystify and propose reforms, but he must remain within the system, he is not allowed to be free’. This is the incipit of the Arte Povera manifesto published in “Flash Art” issue no. 5 of 1967 by Germano Celant, the visionary critic who theorised Arte Povera as guerrilla art, free from constraints and rules, in open opposition to traditional art. A great creative wave that unhinged certainties, rejected techniques and formal supports, using poor materials such as earth, wood, iron, rags, industrial waste…
It is a radical critique that uses the language of contemporary society and also resorts to the use of installation and performance work. Celant’s intuition facilitates the aggregation of artists with different sensibilities, who individually experiment with their own language, united by a feeling strongly opposed to the cultural hegemony of the moment. The film sheds light on the innovative aspect of the movement and the desecrating force of a group of young artists who put the cultural world into turmoil, profoundly affecting the growth of contemporary art. “Giuseppe Cederna‘s voice accompanies us through the studios and foundations, the galleries and museums housing the most important collections,” Bongiorno continues, “from Rivoli to the Magazzino Italian Art Museum in New York, in a long and fascinating conversation with the protagonists of this extraordinary artistic research.