The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago presents the conference on Zoom Arte Povera: Ecologies, with art historian Giovanni Aloi.
In recent years, the contemporary art world has developed a growing attention to environmental issues and climate change. The Arte Povera movement, however, began to take an interest in trees, water and indiscriminate urbanization as early as the late 1960s: its protagonists were deeply concerned about the unstoppable gap between Nature and Culture, at the root of the contemporary ecological crisis.
Unlike Land Art, which often intervened on the landscape with monolithic gestures, the Italian pioneers of Arte Povera attempted a mediation between Nature and Culture on a more personal and intimate scale. It is in this context that artists such as Marisa Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto and Jannis Kounellis tried to dismantle the hierarchies and values of classical and modern art, to incorporate the raw honesty of “poor materials” in their works. Their desire to drag the disorder of the real world into exhibition spaces and art galleries has led to disenchanted and genuinely revolutionary research on issues such as concern for environmental degradation and capitalist exploitation.
The webinar will be held tomorrow at 6pm in Chicago (1am on Thursday 2 July in Italy). To register click here.
Giovanni Aloi is an art historian. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York and London and Tate Galleries. He regularly gives lectures on modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
