Anthology of the Poor in Fine Arts and Design. Dialogue between Russia and Italy Automatic translate

On March 26, 2021, the art project “Anthology of the Poor in Fine Arts and Design. Dialogue between Russia and Italy ”. The exhibition will become a kind of comparative analysis of the aesthetics of the “poor”, using the example of representatives of the Italian art movement Arte Povera and Russian participants in the exhibition “Russian Poor”. The exhibit will also include design objects from the 1970s, influenced by arte povera.

The Arte Povera movement, which originated in the 60s of the 20th century, got its name from the curator and art critic Jerman Chelant, who opened an exhibition entitled “Arte Povera e IM Spazio” in Genoa, bringing together artists from Rome, Turin, Milan and Genoa in 1967. The merit of Chelant is that the term he coined accurately marked a new era of Italian art: despite the economic boom in Italy in the late 1950s, artists deliberately chose "poor materials" in an effort to de-commercialize art, take it out of the market and gallery business. trying to free the creative process from the limitations of traditional forms and artistic space. Throughout the twentieth century, reactionary movements appeared in Italian art every now and then, starting with Italian futurism (avant-garde movement,which became a reaction to the development of industrialization and made it possible for artists to find new creative methods) to the anti-avant-garde metaphysics of Giorgio de Chirico and his associates, who denied technological progress as a means, a kind of impetus for the development of culture and art, which were essentially anti-technological. Their followers turned out to be a whole galaxy of post-war artists, among whom were Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, and others. Along with the industrial and economic upsurge in Italy in the 1950s – 1960s, consumer culture developed dramatically - they became the main prerequisites for the development of art povera. Artists who adhered to this movement believed in art as a serious instrument of social impact and conducted political dialogues. The main representatives are: Giuseppe Penone, Mario Merz, Yannis Kounellis,Mario Ceroli.

Artists of arte povera could not stay away from the subject environment. Objects, ceramics, furniture for cinema and theater performances - all this will be shown by the Heritage Gallery in the framework of the new exhibition. The exposition will also include "poor" furniture, which can at the same time be called objects of functional art, such as the works of the designer Urano Palma, whose sculptures adorn museum collections in Italy and Korea, and the furniture is in international collections; functional objects of the architect, designer and poet Riccardo Dalizi, who took an active position in the anti-design debate, denying consumerism and functional value in design in the name of the act of creativity; unique furniture by Mario Ceroli "mobile della valle", created especially for the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1967-1977; ceramic objects ingenious

sculptor and ceramist Alfonso Leoni of the 1970s, who in the 1960s and 1970s contributed greatly to the preservation of traditional techniques through an experimental, innovative approach to

sculpture and ceramics; and the work of Carlo Zauli, known under the pseudonym "Bianco Zauli" for his monochrome or "sculptor of vases" for the monumentality he gave to such materials as ceramics.

The central part of the exhibition will be dedicated to Russian artists. The exhibition "Russian Poor", by analogy with the Italian arte povera, opened in the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM in 2008, later its name was assigned to the artists of this circle. At that time, there were 36 participants among the participants. However, the artists did not have a common manifesto and did not work collectively, as their Italian colleagues did. Unlike the Italian radical young art of the 1960s, which reacted sharply to the political and social crisis in the country, the "Russian poor" is an unofficial art that managed to emerge from hiding only after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Italy, "poor art" is a protest. The masters’ emphasized disregard for the external representativeness of their works was thought of as a tool,allowing to take art out of the sphere of influence of power structures and market laws. The Italian “poor” existed no longer than one decade, while the “Russian poor” was more likely from the field of metaphysics: it originated in the 50s of the 20th century and still has not ceased to exist due to many factors - not only material, but also mental. “I can see how sloppy a Russian person is in a loose state - he will take a healthy hammer, an ax, a sledgehammer and blurt out… In general, we are still poor people, what kind of art can we still do?” - says Nikolai Polissky, one of the main ideologists and artists of this trend. For the Heritage Gallery project, Nikolai Polissky created column trees that refer to the classical, grandiose Italian architecture through natural materials.Haim Sokol creates unique objects for Belgian collectors: again turning to the topic of disappearance and loss of ties between people: he composes "dead letters" from tin and steel with real texts of Belgian soldiers during the First and Second World Wars. Sergei Shekhovtsov, a prominent representative of the “poor” movement, reformulated sculpture in his work, depriving it of its patrimonial pathos, his architectural masterpieces made of foam rubber are a ready allusion to the synthetic world of Philip Dick. For the Heritage exhibition, he will create a flock of dogs carrying, like Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs, the distinctive signs of various art movements and techniques, from Pollock dripping to graffiti.he composes "dead letters" from tin and steel with real texts of Belgian soldiers during the First and Second World Wars. Sergei Shekhovtsov, a prominent representative of the "poor" movement, reformulated sculpture in his work, depriving it of its patrimonial pathos, his architectural masterpieces made of foam rubber are a ready allusion to the synthetic world of Philip Dick. For the Heritage exhibition, he will create a flock of dogs carrying, like Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs, the distinctive signs of various art movements and techniques, from Pollock dripping to graffiti.he composes "dead letters" from tin and steel with real texts of Belgian soldiers during the First and Second World Wars. Sergei Shekhovtsov, a prominent representative of the “poor” movement, reformulated sculpture in his work, depriving it of its patrimonial pathos, his architectural masterpieces made of foam rubber are a ready allusion to the synthetic world of Philip Dick. For the Heritage exhibition, he will create a flock of dogs bearing, like Wim Delvoye’s tattooed pigs, the distinctive signs of various art movements and techniques, from Pollock dripping to graffiti.like the tattooed pigs of Wim Delvoye, the distinctive signs of various movements and techniques in art: from Pollock dripping to graffiti.like the tattooed pigs of Wim Delvoye, the distinctive signs of various movements and techniques in art: from Pollock dripping to graffiti.

Anna Slobozhanina is a keeper of the cultural code of the Russian North, a young, talented ceramist, video artist, conceptualist. Her special project "Lost" is a conversation about the desire to find inner harmony by creating a subtle connection between the dissolving archaism of the past and the present. Anna lives this theme through the prism of the aesthetics of the Russian North. Traveling to iconic places: Solovki, Kizhi, the villages of Prionezhia and Svirya, the artist studies the history of the world, which can disappear in an instant. One of the symbols used by the artist is the ploughshare, an iconic element of the dome in wooden architecture. Personal memories and impressions - like a ploughshare on a dome - particle by particle make up a single whole, where one cannot exist without the other.

“This exhibition is more relevant than ever, turning each of us, as it were, inside: inside ourselves, the common social problems facing the world community today and forcing, nevertheless, to solve these problems inside in our own way. The exhibition is conceptual, multi-layered and multi-semantic. This is a story about the authenticity of Russian "poor art", about its own cultural code, and at the same time about the penetration of artistic and philosophical ideas and trends of the twentieth century into Russia. And it is also surprisingly subtle and laconic, aesthetic works of Italian representatives of arte povera, who have conquered the world art market and for which, it seems to me, our collectors are ready, ”says curator and owner of the gallery Kristina Krasnyanskaya. In the exhibition Anthology of the Poor in Fine Arts and Design.Dialogue between Russia and Italy ”will feature works and special projects of artists of different generations: Alexander Brodsky, Rinat Voligamsi, Valery Koshlyakov, Andrey Kuzkin, Ivan Lungin, Nikolai Polissky, Khaim Sokol, Sergey Shekhovtsov.