This book is the English translation of the artist’s writings first published in 1985. In line with the work system adopted by Mario Merz, the transcription of the texts does not maintain a chronological order, but identifies three moments of typological distinction in which different referential identities emerge in the development of the writing.

“Voglio fare subito un libro” (I want to make a book right now) is a collection of published and unpublished texts written by Mario Merz up to 1985, in which the dialogue between the ’forces’ of art and those of literature erupts at times luxuriantly and brilliantly and at times harshly and critically; it is concentrated or dispersed in various topics that flow through the pages like a river in flood. The poetic freedoms that Mario Merz appropriates in the act of writing are interwoven with suggestions and references to his art. An art managed on the basis of inventions: of architectural structures (the progression of tables, spirals or the better-known igloos...), of pictorial constructions (which have developed since the birth of Merz the artist), on the natural cyclical and numerical development of the elements (the application of Fibonacci’s numerical progression), on the use of materials rejected by society (broken glass, old newspapers...), on strategic statements (“Se il nemico si concentra perde terreno, se si disperde perde forza”, “Objet cache-toi”, “Città irreale…”) which are included in his works as axioms and emerge as traces in the reading of this book.” Harald Szeemann

The book is a collection of texts produced by Michelangelo Pistoletto from 1962 to 1989, arranged in chronological order. With an interweaving of materials, this book brings to the surface the most stimulating faculties of that organic whole of artistic and literary work with which Pistoletto elaborates around thirty years of creativity. Un artista in meno grows around the book L'uomo nero (The Bogeyman), reflecting and overturning its structure, in which the canons of closure and opening are self-eliminated by making its two parts converge on a "sign" (the signature), two-thirds from the beginning of the book. Paradoxically transposing the specular circuit of attraction and repulsion onto a circuit of cross-references between the writing and the work of art, in Un artista in meno the photographic images of works live on, like moments alternating with theoretical writing, poetic texts and work notes. It is exemplary how the immediate impact of Minus Objects compares and complements the speculation of Famous Last Words or the historical dilation of the perception of a work with the grammatical simularity of the Rocking Temple...

Pistoletto writes: 'Most of the time the book is closed. Only accidentally does it open, like life. A mirror in a dark room'.

Michelangelo Olivero Pistoletto (Biella, 25 June 1933) is an Italian artist, painter and sculptor, animator and protagonist of the Arte Povera movement. In 1962 he produced the Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings), with which he gained widespread recognition by participating in international Pop Art exhibitions. In 1964 he produced the Plexiglass, which opened the season of Conceptual Art. Between 1965 and 1966 he produced the Oggetti in meno (Minus Objects), considered fundamental for the birth of Arte Povera. In the 1990s he founded Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, placing art in an active relationship with the various spheres of the social fabric in order to inspire and produce a responsible transformation of society. In 2003 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. In 2004, the University of Turin awarded him an honorary degree in Political Science and on this occasion the artist announced the birth of the Third Paradise. In 2007 he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts in Jerusalem "for his consistently creative career as an artist, educator and activist, whose tireless intelligence has given rise to premonitory art forms that contribute to a new understanding of the world". In 2013, the Louvre Museum in Paris hosted his solo exhibition and in the same year he received the Praemium Imperiale for painting in Tokyo. His works can be found in the collections of major modern and contemporary art museums. Official website of the artist: www.pistole

“Just as we saw a moment ago, even before opening it, this volume offered a shape and a colour: a green square immediately evokes a gaming table and it is here that I am now going to arrange the various and changing faces of a solitaire”. Giulio Paolini, author of this artist’s book, guides the reader through his works from the beginning, introducing him to a more “strictly personal” knowledge of his enigmatic work. In addition to a rich bibliography, the book includes historical texts by the artist and others that have never been published before.

This collection includes the writings of the German artist, born in Munich in 1880, who founded Der Blaue Reiter with Kandinsky around 1911. The writings, arranged chronologically from 1910 to 1915, comprise articles and notes on art theory and politics, texts that appeared in Der Blaue Reiter Almanac and writings from the war period in which Marc was a volunteer participant from 1914 to March 1916, the date of his death. These writings are a very important key to understanding the panorama of European art in the age of the avant-garde, the fundamental climate for the artistic development of our century. Permeated with important issues (the rejection of Renaissance perspective, the importance of synthesis and constructiveness in composition, the expressive value of Kandinsky and the ‘savages’, the relationship between art and science, popular art and the visual value of art, the transcendent meaning of war, the future of Europe), the narrative is always oracular and visionary. The deep philosophical content, which links in with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the polemic with Tolstoy’s aesthetics and the intensity of expression make it meaningful and moving. The selection is completed by a commemoration written by Wassily Kandinsky on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the author’s