Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1993 and has been dealing with contemporary art for more than forty years. He made his debut in the late 50s wit a painting centred on self-portrait. In 1961, he painted a canvas completely black and on the black he put a thick layer of paint, so that the canvas became a reflecting surface: in this way the two things, the canvas and the mirror had become one. This is the beginning of the cycle “Il Presente”. In 1962 he transformed the reflecting canvas into a steel mirror, applying images of the human figures to polished steel plates, in this way the observer becomes part of the painting since he sees himself into it. In 1968, he formed the group “Lo Zoo” and started working paying particular attention to combining different expressive forms, from music to theatre. In the 70s he went back to the theme of the mirror with the cycle “Divisione e moltiplicazione dello specchio” (Division and multiplication of the mirror): the mirror is split and put together into different unities that are often arranged at an angle so that new possibilities of reflecting and refracting are created. In the 80s he started sculpting: with L’architettura dello specchio (1990) he dealt again with the theme of the mirror: it is a large mirror divided into four parts which can ideally reflect the whole world. Metro cubo d’infinito (1996) was done using six mirrors. While putting them together, Pistoletto discovered that the images reflected in the mirrors an infinite number of times. |
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