<p>Mario Merz, the late, great proponent of Arte Povera, envisioned the contemporary artist as a nomad, ever mediating and meditating on the relationship between nature and culture. He began to make work after his arrest in 1945 for anti-fascist activities; confined to jail, he drew incessantly on whatever material he could find. After his release, he painted first in oil on canvas, then began to pierce the canvas--as well as objects such as bottles, umbrellas and raincoats--with neon tubes, symbolically infusing them with energy. In 1968, Merz adopted one of his signature motifs, the igloo, symbol of the transitory artist. At base a metal skeleton, the igloo could be covered with site-specific fragments of clay, wax, mud, glass, burlap, or bundles of branches, and decorated with political or literary phrases in neon tubing. Merz's iconography later came to incorporate the Fibonacci formula of mathematical progression (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34...), stacked newspapers, archetypal animals, motorcycles and the table, symbol of the human need for fulfillment and interaction. This posthumous monograph is the most complete publication on the artist. It includes documentation of his entire artistic production, including paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings, neon and Fibonacci series work, plus many previously unpublished materials. With a comprehensive history of Merz's career, a bibliography, a biographic chronology and critical essays, it offers a deep and deserving reflection of the artist and his significant role in twentieth-century art.</p>

Mario Merz: The Monograph

Arts & Photography

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn

Giovanni Castagnoli, Pier

Individual Artists

Fondazione Merz

For his recent show at the Fondazione Merz, German conceptual artist Wolfgang Laib (born 1950) fashioned an installation of hundreds of small rice mountains, a line of small mountains of pollen and a great mountain of beeswax. Laib elucidates the symbolism thus: "The pollen recalls the beginning and creation; the rice mountains and the beeswax Ziggurat and the bond of the sky with the earth."

Wolfgang Laib

Ottmann, Klaus

Tosatto, Guy

<i>A Negress of Noteworthy Talent</i> documents a multimedia project developed by Kara Walker (born 1969) in Turin: her 2011 solo exhibition at the Fondazione Merz, a workshop for students from the Art Academy and University of Turin, an international conference on the politics and psychology of race stereotypes. The result is a defiantly unresolved exploration of the myth and memory of the African-American experience, an experience not fully collective or personal, but something uncomfortably in between, unfolding in a sinister and humorous shadowland of grotesque silhouettes and puppets. Walker’s Turin project further explores the drama of race that is as much a drama of the unconscious as it is about skin.

Kara Walker: A Negress of Noteworthy Talent

Walker, Rebecca

Gambari, Olga

Morena, Luca

Harris-Perry, Melissa

History & Criticism

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Fondazione Merz publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fondazione Merz