The history of Russian art between 1919 and 1930 offers numerous examples of collaboration between painters and writers who came into close contact in the avant-garde groups. Malevich, for his part, felt that the pictorial medium was insufficient to respond to the more precise demands of a new logical discourse, and in the summer of 1919 he temporarily abandoned painting in order to turn to the creation of theoretical texts. Rejecting the “imperfection of the ruffled brush” in favour of the “subtlety of the pen”, Malevich crossed the boundary between painter and philosopher. He did not write about Suprematism, but wrote as a Suprematist, drawing on the extra-pictorial consequences of the new meaning he attributed to painting.

Jean-Claude Marcadé, emeritus director of research at the C.N.R.S Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, has been the curator and scientific commissioner of numerous exhibitions, including the monographic exhibition dedicated to Malevich at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bilbao in 2006.

Nadia Caprioglio graduated from the University of Turin in Russian Language and Literature. She completed a PhD in Comparative Slavic Literature at the University of Milan and spent time at the A. Pushkin Institute of Russian Language and Literature in Moscow, the Lomosov University in Moscow, the Université Libre in Brussels and the University of Nebraska in Omaha. She has been a researcher at the University of Turin since 1992, and since the 1996-97 academic year has held the chair of Contemporary Russian Literature at the Faculty of Education where she holds courses on twentieth-century poetry and preparatory seminars on Russian versification.

This volume, published with the support of the Piedmont Region, is a tribute to the forty years of activity of Luciano Pistoi (1927-1995), art critic, cultural promoter and organiser, and one of the most important and influential gallery owners in Italy. His career developed between Turin, Rome and Castello di Volpaia, where he was quick to present emerging international artists, chosen counter to prevailing opinion with great passion and intuition. This led to the formation of a fine collection and the renewal of the contemporary artistic environment. Born into a Tuscan family, he came to Turin at a very young age and in the 1950s wrote as an art critic for “L’Unità”. In 1957 he opened the Galleria Notizie with an exhibition by Wols and continued by presenting the works of Fautrier, Pollock, Burri, Fontana, Dubuffet, Mathieu, Tobey, Spazzapan, Imai, Tàpies, Accardi, Gallizio, Twombly, Jorn, Shiraga, Riopelle, Francis, Nevelson and other protagonists of the informal movement. He organised extraordinary exhibitions in Turin, including, in collaboration with Michel Tapié, the first exhibition in Europe of the Japanese Gutai group in 1959 and in the same year, again with the French critic, the international Arte Nuova exhibition at the Circolo degli Artisti. In addition to Tapié, he worked with the most active and committed art critics of the time: Enrico Crispolti, Carla Lonzi, Maurizio Fagiolo and Giuliano Briganti.

The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition Lo spazio dell’uomo  (The space of man ) held at the Fondazione Merz (Turin) from 24 January to 11 May 2008. The exhibition is realised in agreement and with the support of the Regione Piemonte, with the contribution of the DIRAC (Ministero de Relaciones Exteriores), the patronage of the IILA (Istituto Italo-Latino Americano) and in collaboration with the Fundación Allende.

As the point of departure, the Fondazione Merz has chosen to present, for the first time in Europe, the Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity) with a selection of 29 works from their collection of international art, and then to offer a look at current artistic production, represented here by the works of six young Chilean artists.

“The interviews collected here – from the first, given in 1962, to the last, published after his death in 1987 – allow us to appreciate Warhol’s constancy and his ability to continue to play the part of a sort of Sphinx swearing it has no enigma to offer.” (Alain Cueff).

There is probably no cultural personality who has been interviewed as frequently as Andy Warhol. His figure was perennially associated with the media and wherever he went, the press followed him. As far as possible, this book presents Warhol in all his dimensions over the twenty-five years he was in the spotlight. There are pieces focusing on every area of his vast oeuvre and voracious life: Andy as painter, filmmaker, publisher, promoter, performer, printmaker, photographer, author and videographer; there are interviews that illustrate Andy’s views on other artists; the experience of going shopping with him; what his feelings were about New York; how he perceived his Catholicism. Although we have tried to maintain a certain chronological balance, more than half of the interviews date from the 1960s, considered the most important period of his life. No changes have been made to the interviews, nor have revised versions of the texts been included.

Original title: I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR. Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, 1962-1987 (edited by Kenneth Goldsmith), Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York 2004.

This volume marks the start of a series dedicated to contemporary art promoted and coordinated by Catalogarte. Archivio del catalogo d’esposizione d’arte moderna e contemporanea, set up in 1985 at the Department of Culture. For twenty years Catalogarte. Archivio del catalogo d’esposizione di arte moderna e contemporanea has been documenting and preserving the historical memory of exhibitions in Turin and Piedmont. This is the basis for the decision to give the Archive a series of publications which, through its double value as a tool for documentation and analysis, provides, with the succession of volumes, a useful contribution to the in-depth study and knowledge of particular themes and topics stimulated by the daily evolution of artistic events, reconstructing their history and providing of reference from which certain events and experiences originate in a straightforward way that nevertheless reflects any problem areas, in order to evaluate better not only the premises but also their development. 

The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Estorick Collection in London from September 14th to December 18th 2005.

From Futurism to Arte Povera: Works from the Marcello Levi Collection exhibition brings to London for the first time over fifty paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations from the collection of Marcello Levi, one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in Italy. Levi began collecting Futurist drawings and masters such as Klee and Man Ray, before becoming one of the earliest collectors of Arte Povera. His incredible foresight enabled him to gather together a remarkable body of work that has rarely been shown in public before.

Levi was active during the same years as Eric Estorick, but tended to favour abstract rather than figurative art. The exhibitions selection, installation and display of key works reveals fascinating parallels and differences in their approaches to collecting, making this a particularly stimulating and insightful venture for the Estorick Collection.

The book includes two essays by Robert Lumley (Professor of Italian Cultural History at University College in London) and by Francesco Manacorda, art critic and curator of the Levi collection, plus a conversation curated by Maria Centonze.