Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella 1933)

Key figure in contemporary art and one of the founders of the Arte Povera movement. Michelangelo Pistoletto began exhibiting in 1955 and in 1960 held his first solo exhibition at the Glleria Galatea in Turin. His first pictorial production is characterised by research into self-portraiture. Between 1961 and 1962, he developed the Mirror Paintings series, which directly include the viewer in the work. These works consist of mirror-polished steel plates on which life-sized tissue paper figures appear. Through these works the artist quickly achieved international recognition and success, which led him to solo exhibitions in prestigious galleries and museums in Europe and the United States during the 1960s. In 1964 he produced Plexiglass and between 1965 and 1966 he created a series of works entitled Minus Objects, considered fundamental for the birth of Arte Povera. During the 1990s, with Progetto Arte and with the creation in Biella of Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto and the Università delle Idee, he brought art into an active relationship with the various spheres of the social fabric in order to inspire and produce a responsible transformation of society. In 2003 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. In 2004, the University of Turin awarded him an honorary degree in Political Science. On this occasion, the artist announced what constitutes the most recent phase of his work, called the Third Paradise. In 2010 he wrote the essay The Third Paradise, and over the years the symbol he created was exported to various cities, from Assisi to Treviso, until finally arriving in 2020 in Biella, his home town. In 2017, he signed the manifesto Ominiteismo e Demopraxia, in which he addressed the theme of spirituality, monotheistic religions and politics. In 2021 the Universario, an exhibition space in which the artist presents his most recent research, was inaugurated at Cittadellarte, and in 2022 La formula della creazione was published, a theoretical summa of his artistic parabola: "from the genesis of my work this book leads, through 31 steps, to the genesis of the universe. And, at the same time, to the genesis of a new society".