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