Arte Povera: An idea that changed art

By Meg Brian Lopez and Julius Jessu Espino
Photo: Julius Jessu Espino
Layout: Lorie Ann Gloria

Mr. Danilo Eccher with Meg Brian Lopez

 Mr. Danilo Eccher with Julius Jessu Espino

Have you ever heard about ‘Arte Povera’? Many normal people including us doesn’t have any single idea about that. Well, thanks to De La Salle University St. Benilde’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) to hold a public lecture on the 25th of January, 2018 featuring Mr. Danilo Eccher, a well-known Italian curator art critic and currently, the Director of the Galleria Civia d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Italy to discuss what this art is all about.

According to Eccher, Arte Povera is an Italian contemporary art with an English term for ‘poor art’, it’s a contemporary art movement specialized to work with any free materials or scraps or almost worthless things. It could be a wood, a stone or iron as long as it doesn’t have price and members of this group transforms those rubbish into a work of art. Eccher added, “To be poor means to be out of the market so they started build not only relation with the landscape but they started to build some world that was impossible to sell”, unlike painting that represents only pictures, sketches and it’s marketable, Arte Povera connects directly on the reality, life, nature and it’s impossible to make money on it.

“The art situation was tragically stronger because all the years before, it was completely focused on the painting. But after this kind of revolution, they changed completely the idea of the reality, and the first problem is they have decided to do is stop on the painting and go out on the square, go out of the canvas. They started to work directly in the landscape.” –Danilo Eccher

Mr. Danilo Eccher 

Sometime between 1960s and ‘70s, this movement was boomed because of art revolution by European students from different universities. This was completely changed the way of art, the way Italian artists think about their works during that time. Many of them focused in this new language of art and it is impossible to bring back the popularity of painting and other art because this revolting idea spreads quickly not only on Italy but also in whole Europe to American land. This uprising not only changed the idea of art, it also affects social and economic way.

As his lecture goes by, Danilo Eccher presents famous Italian artists that made Arte Povera very well known until now.

A Wooden Igloo by Mario Merz

The Wooden Igloo was the work of very famous Arte Povera artist, Mario Merz. “He was probably one the most radical, the most precise artist who decided to work with the reality, with the trees and the other powers of nature.” This was perfect example of Arte Povera, because he used curved steel tubes inside the Igloo and many pieces of woods as cover of the igloo. Merz made this because Eccher said that “he take this idea throughout the world and at the same time, out of the market to found the new energy inside of the world, inside of the nature.

Eccher interpret this as “it's the same concept of energy to compress and to compress the energy means to found the real power of the nature everywhere, the power of the nature is everywhere and the igloo is the position of the space where the energy points”. The energy that Danilo Eccher is pointing means the impression, effect, meaning of art to its audience. The igloo is a kind habitat, home for people especially in very cold places, whether it varies on materials, this simply means that it construct to live with nature according to our research because this kind of art cannot be simply understand it’s meaning.

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled (12 Horses), 1969

Jannis Kounellis has the same concept as Merz. He thinks that art must connected with nature. So he put 12 horses on a gallery, tethered it facing the wall with glistening floor on the middle of exhibit and he called it an art.

This means that in this work, anything could art since the poor art relies with nature and reality and horses is technically connected with nature and reality thus, this exhibit become famous because of its simple meaning.
Another Italian Arte Povera artists has the same concept as Merz and Kounellis but Michelangelo Pistoletto gives it much more sophisticated matter. One of his known work was the two mirrors reflecting on each other.

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Division and Multiplication of the Mirror, 1975-1978

The mirror from the far seems to be simply attached on the wall but on the time when anyone went in front of it, of course they will saw themselves and that’s what Pistoletto wants to convey. Eccher says that “anybody can become a part of art, the people who went on that exhibit becomes a part of art, you became art and the concept is also fantastic because it means that anybody can be art and in other hand it means that art must be democratic, must be popular, anybody must involve in art. If you became the part of the art of course art must be for everyone”.

Arte Povera could also show extraordinary relationship between soul and nature. 

 Being the River, Repeating the Forest, 2015

This art by one of famous Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, a tree carved and reveal the trunk as skeleton of the tree. The skeleton trunk represents the soul of the tree and the tree represents the nature and reality.

“This means that the need that the nature you can see everything but in the same time inside the nature, you found the reality, the reality is not where you see but where you feel to be inside of nature.” – Mr. Danilo Eccher.

            
Arte Povera could be found on Alchemy too as Gilberto Zorio focus on in. Eccher gives meaning of alchemy “Alchemy is possibility to change the material for this reason use many different chemical material to produce the work of change”. One of his famous work was the battery.

Gilberto Zorio, Piombi, 1968

Zorio just simply placed the battery with a copper that connects and shows the chemical change of two sides of it.

Gino De Dominicis. 2nd solution of immortality (the universe is immobile), 1972

I wonder how this called art but still, Eccher explains it; “you have to be completely open open mind completely to feel the art, it's not only in the museum, but you can see the art everywhere around you, in the trees, in the batteries, everything can be art everything can be potentially can be art, the only problem is in our mind. We decide, we need to be so curious to find art and the very magical power of artist is to say this could be art.”

Gino De Dominicis focus on invisible reality of Arte Povera, he placed a square on the floor with a person with Down syndrome sitting on the corner of the museum. The square is an invisible cube and the man sitting on it was pretending that the square is a cube. “It is very difficult to understand if you think only on the artist” Eccher added. Everyone should go through the art to understand it.

Danilo Eccher ends his lecture on words saying “the only problem not only in contemporary art, where you have to discover the different meaning in each work, each work is like a secret combination and when you found finally the combination, you open it and you found another combination, this is the problem of the art you have to do art and you have to read art without being pretentious to know everything, this is important.”

On our interview with him, “Arte Povera was one of more important movement for contemporary art, not only in Italy but everywhere in the world. I believe it's important to study this language because after this time all it’s changed in the art”. That’s the reason why he discussed it over other types of contemporary art. He also said that he is very excited to know what’s happening on Philippine art.

As for presented artists and their works, Arte Povera varies in different forms it’s also very different on other kind of art in extent that many Italian artist started to work with this because they are tired to work with traditional ideas of art and started to make output out of scraps. It’s not just economically, socially different but also it’s a very complex because those idea of those Italian Contemporary artist is very hard to appreciate because it’s not easy to understand, you have to think critically on those particular art and as Danilo Eccher, “art could be everywhere”, it’s all depends on us how to express our thoughts on it because Arte Povera will appreciate depends on the minds and eyes of its audience or the people who saw those works.

Danilo Eccher’s lecture was the first series of many upcoming public lecture that MCAD will conduct as the museum celebrates their year long 10^th founding anniversary. If you’re interested in contemporary art and to listen on this lectures. Just visit www.mcadmanila.org.ph for inquiries.