The Dignitaries of Destiny get together to decide a birth: a new life will be soon assigned to a woman who wishes to be a mother. But the decision is taking too long, and the person who's going to be born decides to ask whether to choose their destiny. Here begins the exciting adventure of their birth, full of hopes and expectations, but also of unexpected events that run the risk to prejudice the Call to Life. But finally the miracle is made and what they have just imagined becomes true... From the synergy between Miguel Angel Mendo's words and Chen Zhen's images, a tender and fun fable telling children the mystery of birth through a simple and poetic language, that goes with the colours and shapes of Art.

Chen Zhen (Shangai, 1955 - Paris, 2000). His artistic style had as its basis the encounter between Western and Chinese culture. The artist drew from Taoism, as well as Buddhist religion and philosophy, re-elaborating their meanings, and using them to represent an alternative to the negative influence exercised by the consumer society. The artistic value of his sculptures and installations lies in his constant striving for harmony between body and spirit, which leads to the enriching of one’s inner life.

Miguel Angel Mendo (Madrid, 1949). A graduate in psychology, he began working as a psychotherapist in close contact with the world of children and alternative pedagogy. He has written books for children, but also for the theatre, and in the past has been a teacher of cinema, a contributor to various periodicals and an editor for television and radio programmes. The following have been translated into Italian by Edizioni Piemme Junior: Per un maledetto spot which won the Lazarillo Award in 1989, one of Spain's most prestigious prizes for books for the young, and also Un museo sinistro e Che i morti stiano zitti!

The monographic catalogue is published for the exhibition at Carré d'Art Musée d'Art Contemporain of Nîmes from July 13th to September 24th 2000.

The catalogue collects 70 unpublished drawings by the artist, showed at the exhibition, sheets of drawing and tracing paper on which marks and colours sketch igloos, cones, animals, various shapes that animate Mario Merz imaginary universe.

Founded in Turin in 1963, Sperone Gallery hosted extreme and different art forms: Pop Art, Arte Povera, New Dada, Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Transavanguard, have found in this space a sure landmark that have let artists and critics cross national boundaries. The book, made up of 2 tomes, describes Sperone Gallery’s history through a large documentation of photographs of the exhibitions of more than 150 artists, hosted in Turin, Rome and New York. The first tome, centred around the activity at the gallery in Turin from 1963 to 1972, includes the texts by the authors; the opening of the new spaces in Rome and New York marks the beginning of the second tome, that speaks about art exhibitions organized from 1972 to 1999, and ends with a chronological and geographical list of all the exhibitions and of all the artists. The pages, in chronological sequence, tell Sperone Gallery's history, draw the route and its most important stages, through views of the fittings of the exhibitions, photographs of the artworks, invitations, texts taken from the original catalogues and from newspapers articles. All the archive material is the result of a deep research made by the authors Anna Minola, Maria Cristina Mundici, Francesco Poli and Maria Teresa Roberto, each of them studying in depht with an essay an important period of the Gallery’s activity, that gives the book the charactheristic of being both critical and historical.

The book offers an interesting interpretation of contemporary art history, here rivisited through unpublished and unusual images that let fully understand the fervour and enthusiasm that always go with the artistic choises of this historical gallery.

The book is published with the contribute of Regione Piemonte.

This small book collects and orders chronologically most of the notes written by Giuseppe Pellizza in Turin in September-October 1891, when he tried his hand in the competition for the national artistic pension. The notes belong to three different notebooks, one of which is preserved in Giuseppe Pellizza’s studio-museum in Volpedo. The transcriptions are by Pierluigi Pernigotti for the Volpedo notebook, and Virgilio Giacomo Bono and Aurora Scotti Tosini for the other two.

This volume is the catalogue of the exhibition of the artist Per Barclay held at the Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea in Trento, from 22 January to 12 March 2000.
The volume is edited by Vittoria Coen and contains texts by Vittoria Coen, Micheal Vincent Tarantino, Karin Hellandsjø and Lars O. Ericsson.

Per Barclay (Oslo, 1955) is a Norwegian art historian and sculptor who lives and works between Turin and Oslo.
In line with the assumptions of the conceptual reinterpreted through Arte Povera, Barclay uses different media such as photography, installation, object sculpture and later sound to develop his work around a single experience, that of space. His art develops along four fundamental lines of work that coexist over time: interiors, installations, works embedded in nature and finally bodies. Going beyond the usual coordinates linked to different expressive media, the artist seeks a dialogue between architectural space and the human interior, where each element flows into the work in a psychological balance constantly calibrated on the edge of disquiet. For Barclay, like a stage director, he works in real space and transforms it into a fictitious place, telling another story. The room becomes a scene, a scene at the disposal of the artist/director, who uses it to create the work. The reflection and duplication of the image, the ambiguity cleverly conferred on the liquid elements (oil, water, blood) are essential components of the work.

A tower builder undertakes a long journey in the hope of finding new ideas and building the most beautiful tower for the King’s son. The journey becomes a metaphor for an arduous artistic search and the town of Trees, the Bar of Stones and a rocky road travelled together with a car salesman are the places in which new shapes, colours and scents are found. Time passes inexorably and the tower builder’s search does not seem to bear fruit; neither the places he visits nor the people he meets along the way suggest a brilliant idea. Only the peace of a moonlit night will give him the right inspiration and save his life.
Fabrizio Monetti’s images and the words of Guido Quarzo’s story offer the stimulus that brings children closer to the world of primary sensations.

Guido Quarzo was born in Turin in 1948. He graduated in pedagogy from the University of Turin and taught in primary schools for many years. Considered one of the most interesting children’s writers, in 1995 he was awarded the Andersen Baia delle Favole prize for best author. For hopefulmonster he has published Luì e l’arte di andare nel bosco and Storie di pietra e d’altro.

Fabrizio Monetti has performed in several theatre companies and has also worked as an actor in films such as Portami via and Benvenuti a San Salvario, as well as in radio and RAI television series. As a painter he exhibited in several personal and collective exhibitions until 1994. He has Il costruttore di torri as the basis to stage a production for a single actor, which has been performed in schools, libraries and theatres.