Giovanni ANSELMO

Born 1934 in Bongofranco D’Ivrea, Italy
Based in Turin, Italy

Giovanni Anselmo began as a self-taught painter, but before long he discarded traditional and even established modern approaches to art, and began making sculptures that employ materials like stone and metal to convey invisible forces such as gravity and magnetism. He is recognized in his native Italy and elsewhere as one of the most prominent participants in the late 1960s Arte Povera (literally “poor art”) movement that arose in Italy. In the late 1970s he began producing works focused on the depth and intensity of the color ultramarine (a word that originally meant “beyond the sea”), while continuing to explore imaginative combinations and transformations of matter, energy, light, and distance. Anselmo is a rare figure in that he continues to staunchly champion the radical poetics forged by late 1960s art. He received the Golden Lion Award at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990, and has held numerous solo exhibitions including at Kunsthalle Basel (1979), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1985), and Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2013).

Untitled 1969 Foto © Paolo Mussat Sartor