Mario Merz (Milan, 1 January 1925 – Milan, 9 November 2003) was an Italian artist, painter and sculptor, an exponent of the Arte Povera movement. Raised in Turin, he attended the faculty of medicine at the University of Turin for two years. Read the full biography
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Mario Merz (Milan, 1 January 1925 – Milan, 9 November 2003) was an Italian artist, painter and sculptor, an exponent of the Arte Povera movement. Raised in Turin, he attended the faculty of medicine at the University of Turin for two years. During the Second World War he joined the anti-fascist group Justice and Freedom and in 1945 he was arrested and imprisoned while leafleting. After the Liberation, also encouraged by the critic Luciano Pistoi, he dedicated himself full time to painting, starting with oil on canvas. He began with an abstract-expressionist style, then moved to an informal treatment of painting. In 1954, his first solo exhibition was held at the La Bussola gallery in Turin. In the mid-sixties he began to abandon painting to experiment with different materials, such as neon tubes, with which he perforated the surface of the canvases to symbolize an infusion of energy, or iron, wax and stone, with which he experimented with first three-dimensional assemblages, the "volumetric paintings". He was present from the first Arte Povera exhibitions, together with the artists who had participated in the collective organized by Germano Celant at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa (1967) and gathered at Gian Enzo Sperone's Turin Gallery: Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giuseppe Penone , Luciano Fabro and others. He soon became a point of reference for the group.
