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When Italian art critic and curator Germano Celant died in 2020 at the age of 79, he left behind a legacy of curatorial philosophy that decisively shaped postwar art in the West, and will undoubtedly influence future generations of curators. In 1967, Celant published his manifesto “Notes for a Guerrilla War” in which he coined the term Arte Povera to classify Italy’s artistic counter to the Pop art trends prevailing in the United States and the United Kingdom at the time. This publication provides a chronology of 34 exhibitions curated by Celant, beginning with the first Arte Povera gallery show in 1967 and closing with the sprawling 2018 Prada Foundation show Post Zang Tumb Tuuum: Art Life Politics: Italia 1918–1943. Appraising the exhibitions as well as the theoretical writings from their respective catalogs, this volume seeks to reconstruct the most important shows of Celant’s career from initial conception to public reception. The Story of (MY) Exhibitions explores the unique approach to curation that characterized Celant’s life and work. His career trajectory is a nonlinear evolution of personal interpretation and historical documentation that prioritizes nontraditional media and strives to break down boundaries between different artistic languages.

Artists include Kurt Schwitters, Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow, Jan Dibbets, Antonio Dias, Sarkis, Topor, Jack Goldstein, Jean Tinguely, and others. Includes discography, index of record producers, and list of works.

Indice ( un capitolo per ogni artista, 6/9 tavole per ogni artista / a chapter for every artist, 6/9 plates for every artist) / Index: Walter De Maria / Bruce Nauman / Dennis Oppenheim / Mario Merz / Robert Morris / Piero Manzoni / Cristo / Vito Acconci / Michael Heizer / Joseph Kosuth / Gilbert & George / Sol Lewitt / Richard Long / Jannis Kounellis / Francesco Lo Savio / Dan Flavin / Agnes Martin / Bernd & Hilla Becher / Robert Ryman / Giulio Paolini / Daniel Buren / Richard Tuttle / On Kawara / Carl Andre / Joseph Beuys / Donald Judd

Questa cronistoria, la cui prima stesura è dell’agosto 1972, prende in considerazione solo gli avvenimenti collettivi costituiti principalmente da manifestazioni di gruppo e da fonti scritte, quali saggi, pubblicazioni e dichiarazioni che hanno determinato, nella storia dei singoli movimenti, gli atteggiamenti teorici e le definizioni linguistiche, mentre tralascia gli apporti individuali dei singoli artisti. La scelta del periodo dal 1966 al 1969 è dovuta al fatto che questi quattro anni hanno segnato la pre-historia della minimal art, della conceptual art, della land art, dell’arte povera, della body art, dell’arte ambientale, della pittura sistematica e dei nuovi media (videotape, disco, fotografia, film, ecc.) affermatisi definitivamente negli anni settanta. Il materiale raccolto, desunto dalle manifestazioni e dai documenti pubblicati, ha pertanto ragione storica. Solo in alcuni casi, in assenza del documento iconografico, se ne è pubblicato uno storicamente simile.

La Galleria de’ Foscherari nasce nei primi anni Sessanta, con un programma culturale al quale è rimasta fedele, svolto in due direzioni strettamente connesse: l’attenzione alla tradizione criticamente consolidata e l’interesse per la ricerca e la sperimentazione. Nel 1968 con la mostra dedicata all’ Arte Povera (Anselmo, Boetti, Ceroli, Fabro, Kounellis, Merz, Paolini, Pascali, Piacentino, Pistoletto, Prini, Zorio), curata da Germano Celant, si inizia precocemente a percorrere quel crinale lungo il quale la neoavanguardia riflette su se stessa fino ad estenuarsi nel corso degli anni settanta.Proprio questa mostra, a cui partecipano i maggiori rappresentanti della tendenza, induce la galleria a spingere più a fondo il dibattito teorico sull’arte coinvolgendo i più prestigiosi e combattivi critici e storici dell’arte italiani. Il risultato sarà uno dei più apprezzati quaderni della collana editoriale che la Galleria aveva inaugurato, assieme alle monografie dei maestri: “La povertà dell’arte” raccoglie infatti tutti gli interventi di quell’appassionante dibattito ed offre ancora oggi spunti di straordinario interesse. Maffei, 2007, p.205 Lippard, 1973, p.58

Non un testo sistematico, ma una raccolta variegata di interventi che consentono di cogliere le diverse forme espressive dell’arte contemporanea in ambiti non convenzionali, dalla moda al libro, dal bodydesign al disco. L’arte come contaminazione tra linguaggi diversi, sconfinamento da una materia all’altra, da una tecnica all’altra, da un’espressività all’altra. La trasformazione dei musei, da istituzioni per la conservazione di opere a macchina da spettacolo e di qualificazione urbana. L’architettura, la cui capacità progettuale, amplificata dalle nuove tecnologie virtuali, espande le potenzialità comunicative fino a diventare visione totale a cui concorrono anche pittori e scultori. Il libro apre a una modalità di fare arte, di che cosa è arte oggi, in cui le distinzioni si fondono e si confondono, in un rapporto fluido di tutti i modi di espressione.

“In occasione della sua seconda mostra personale, Boetti introduce nella struttura dei cataloghi della galleria, graficamente innovativi ma ripetitivi, alcuni elementi di novità che delineano una volontà di appropriazione, a fini artistici, di un tradizionale strumento comunicativo. Il frontespizio è soppresso e sostituito da fotografie dell’artista dal «barbiere» senza commento testuale. La successiva sequenza tradizionale di testi critici e immagini è riscattata dall’inserimento di tavole colorate – quasi una citazione delle incisioni posta a ornamento del libro nella tradizione bibliofila dei «livrea de peintre» – con la rappresentazione del «progetto» delle opere esposte”. (Giorgio Maffei, 2011).

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Between 1918 and 1943 Italy was marked by the crisis of the liberal state and the establishment of fascism, and by the ongoing interdependence of artistic research, social dynamics and political activity. As emphasized by Jacques Ranciere in his book Le partage du sensible. Esthetique et politique (The Politics of Aesthetics. The Distribution of the Sensible) (2000), art never exists in abstraction, but comes into being and takes shape within a given historic and cultural context. From this point of view, political and aesthetic aspects are interwoven. Taking this hypothesis as a starting point, the documents and photographs that prompted the selection of works in the exhibition offer a record of the artistic and cultural production of the period.

The first career-spanning catalog of the work of Gianfranco Gorgoni, whose iconic photographs established Land Art as one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. For five decades, photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni (1941-2019) built his reputation as the premier documentarian of Land Art in the US and beyond. After leaving Italy, Gorgoni started making portraits of the major artists of the New York scene, including Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, Carl Andre, and Richard Serra. It was not long before he was traveling with Heizer, Smithson, and De Maria to the American West in the late 1960s to plot the works that would famously break art practice out of the confines of the gallery world. In Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, these artists embarked on major Land Art installations that would redefine contemporary art practice of the era. In many cases, Gorgoni was the only photographer on the ground to document their projects, and his images often serve as the definitive photographic record of the planning and creation of these groundbreaking works. Published to coincide with the first major exhibition of Gorgoni’s photographic Land Art images at the Nevada Museum of Art, featuring over fifty of his large-scale photographs, Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs includes an introduction by Ann M. Wolfe, Andrea and John C. Deane Family senior curator and deputy director at the Nevada Museum of Art, an essay by the late art historian and critic Germano Celant, whose contribution here is among the last he wrote before his death in 2020, and William L. Fox, the Peter E. Pool Director of the Center for Art + Environment. A landmark collection of photographs of legendary and lesser-known works by Michael Heizer, Walter De Maria, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Ugo Rondinone, and Charles Ross, Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs is a major new assessment of one of the world’s great art movements.

Created in collaboration with the Archivio Opera Piero Manzoni (Onlus) this volume is the first complete cataloging of the work of Manzoni.
A major figure in the art scene of Europe in the late 20th century, Manzoni interpreted the cultural experiences of his time and mixed and matched them, furiously inventing a vast variety of found materials and media, from cotton to “shit,” kaolin to polystyrene, and fiberglass to the human body.
Manzoni (1933-1963) created an immense oevure in an all-too-brief career. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, he persisted in building an art that lay outside of trends and labels: an alchemistic, anarchistic art, constantly ready to divest traditional aesthetic values, seeking a complete reinterpretation of the world. This two-volume catalog is no less than due recognition of Manzoni’s courage and genius.

One of the most adventurous American artists working today, Dennis Oppenheim has centered his artistic investigations on the dialogue between art and the self. An active innovator since the sixties, Oppenheim has pioneered both body art and so-called land art. Most famous for his whimsical, large-scale installation pieces, Oppenheim has worked with a variety of mediums: from performance and video art, to three dimensional moving machine pieces, and sculptural works employing unorthodox materials. This book is a comprehensive compendium of Oppenheim’s art, his most complete monograph to date, and includes an interview with the artist. From a giant metallic upside-down church, to a group of human-sized hot dogs in sleeping bags gathered around a campfire, Oppenheim’s work is alternately strange, humorous, and fascinating.D

Monografia ragionata, a cura di Germano Celant, promossa da Zerynthia, sulla figura e l’opera di una delle artiste italiane più significative. Accardi fa parte di quelle generazioni di donne che, a partire dagli anni Quaranta, hanno messo fine all’emarginazione della creatività con l’affermarsi di scultrici quali Nevelson, Bourgeois, pittrici come Vierie da Silva, Niki de Saint Phalle, aprendo definitivamente la possibilità di riconoscimento alle artiste di oggi.

Da cinquant’anni Franco Toselli esplora i territori dell’arte contemporanea. Un percorso fecondo, iniziato a Milano nel 1967, che lo porta a muoversi in spazi espositivi dalle caratteristiche ambientali mutevoli, dove si avvicendano gli artisti più rappresentativi del panorama internazionale. Insieme a loro Toselli realizza mostre memorabili, prendendo parte alle avventure dei maggiori movimenti: dalla Conceptual Art all’Arte Povera, dall’arte ambientale californiana alla pittura neoespressionista europea. Questo volume, curato da Germano Celant, fornisce una rilettura storico-critica volta a inserire l’operato di Toselli nel più ampio contesto della storia delle gallerie d’arte nel mondo. E lo fa servendosi di un ricco apparato di immagini ‒ molte inedite ‒ messe a disposizione dai massimi fotografi italiani.

This book on Virginia Dwan and her galleries in Los Angeles and New York tells for the first time the unique story of a fundamental player on the global art scene, who has rarely been explored. The Dwan Gallery opened in Los Angeles in 1959 and showed works by artists such as Arman, Yves Klein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Jean Tinguely, becoming a West Coast point of reference for international art. In 1965, Virginia Dwan also opened a gallery in New York, where she exhibited pieces by the protagonists of Minimalism and Conceptual Art. Through a rich collection of images and rare testimonies published for the first time, as well as a detailed chronology, in this volume Germano Celant recounts the years 1959–1971 in the Dwan Gallery, whose shows were as important as those organized by figures such as Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend, also focusing on earlier and subsequent events in Virginia Dwan’s career up to the present.

A graffiti artist and tagger by nature, Barry McGee has in the last few years taken a stealth, guerilla art form, one that is typically the subject of complaint, arrest, and general unappreciation, and transformed it into a well-received medium for display in museum and commercial gallery spaces. His drawings, paintings, and mixed-media installations take their inspiration from contemporary urban culture, incorporating elements such as empty liquor bottles and spray-paint cans, tagged signs, wrenches, and scrap wood or metal into overwhelming, space-transforming interior worlds. Though McGee views graffiti as a vital method of communication, one that keeps him in touch with a larger, more diverse audience than can be reached through the traditional spaces of galleries or museums, he makes fine use of traditional exhibition spaces, using them not only to communicate a subcultural point of view to gallery goers but also to point out ways in which space can be reclaimed. Barry McGee brings together the artist’s graffiti work, paintings, installations, and photography, and is published on the occasion of his exhibition at the Fondazione Prada, in Italy. Included is an interview with McGee by Germano Celant, senior curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Copia con angolo superiore sinistro piegato. Internamente perfetta. / The upper corner is bent. Interior is in perfect condition.

This elegant, boxed set introduces two new works by Thomas Demand, both presented during the 2007 Venice Biennale. The first volume presents “Processo Grottesco,” a life-sized paper model of a grotto–complete with stalagmites and stalactites–that was exhibited along with other source materials and Demand’s final photographic images. With a section of its pages cut in two, so that one can flip through old cave postcards on top or details of the finished artwork on the bottom, this volume contains rich, exhaustive documentation of the project, including historical documents, working drawings, models in progress, close-up details and final artworks, as well as an essay by Germano Celant. The second, slimmer, silver-edged volume presents the Yellowcake photographs, which portray the Nigerian Embassy in Rome–famous for “sparking” the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq. It includes essays by Robert Storr and Alex Farquharson, as well as a summary of “Nigergate” by investigative journalist Carlo Bonini.

Beckley Bill, Broodthaers Marcel, Buren Daniel, Claura Michel, Graham Dan, Immendorff Jörg, Jakobson Roman, Nauman Bruce, Penck A.R., Scanga Italo, Weiner Lawrence, Celant Germano.
Please note that this copy is without the dust jacket in printed pergamin paper.

This collection of Andreas Slominski’s recent work includes Christmas ornaments and all kinds of constructions, including traps, made in a host of materials and techniques. They range from large, aggressive-looking boxes for fighting dogs to toys, like “Van for Mice,” that let the underdog off the hook. Once arranged on the floor of an exhibition space, these snares create a bit of a minefield, an environment where visitors tread with care. Some experiential pieces share the traps’ lighthearted focus on practical matters and working professions: the hiring of frogmen to rescue keys thrown from a bridge, of a skyscraper painter to work on a high window, and of seamstresses to take apart and put back together viewers’ pants–after which they sew in a label marking them as part of a limited edition. With a preface by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli.

Originally published in 1972 by the Nigel Greenwood Gallery, Book as Artwork 1960/1972 was the first catalogue devoted to the then new medium of the artist’s book and it remains a canonical reference (though one that, due to its scarcity, is not as well known as it should be). This publication started as an article and a list of about 80 artists’ books which appeared in 1970 in the first issue of the Italian magazine Arte. Not long after it was translated and published in Interfunktionen. Then in 1972 the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of artists’ books and issued a catalogue with an updated text by Celant and a greatly expanded bibliography (now nearly 300 titles) jointly compiled by Celant and Lynda Morris. The exhibition was the first of its kind and the catalogue a genuinely historic publication. Grounded in the media studies of Marshall McLuhan and philosophical writings of Herbert Marcuse, Celant’s analysis of the medium has the feeling of a definitive statement. He lays out exactly what makes the medium important while noting the historical trends and key individuals that led to its rapid development after 1960. Significantly, the history Celant wrote in 1972 is much broader than the overly simplistic Dieter-Rot-in-Europe-and-Ruscha-in-America origin myth of the artist’s book that has gained currency since. Besides Ruscha and Rot, Celant’s text emphasizes the early influence of John Cage but he also encompasses into the narrative such disparate or overlooked elements as the Zaj group in Spain and Arte Povera in Italy, as well as work related to Fluxus, Art & Language, Land Art, Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism, etc. The bibliography includes books that range from the iconic to the virtually unknown by Vito Acconci, Carl Andre, Alison Knowles, Richard Hamilton, Piero Manzoni, Joseph Kosuth, John Latham, Andy Warhol, Bob Law, Yoko Ono, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Henry Flynt, Hanne Darboven, Dan Graham, Dick Higgins, Joel Fisher, Athena Tacha, John Stezaker, Gianfranco Baruchello, Jose Luis Castillejo, Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris, Stanley Brouwn, Edouardo Paolozzi, Bruce Nauman and Bruce McLean, to name just a few of the artists whose work is cited. With this new edition it is possible to regain the perspective of 1972. It was a period when, as Celant describes it, the “the rules used for the identification of the art object were destroyed” and thus “medium became significant in itself.” Artists’ books were emblematic of the new multidisciplinary approach taken by the era’s avant-garde and, as that approach continues to be the predominant mode among artists working today, it is increasingly clear that artists’ books have been, and continue to be, integral to the practice of art in the contemporary era.

Copia con tracce di colore in copertina e un solo foglio di acetato presente, a pagina 125.

Luigi Ghirri was an extraordinary photographer, as well as a writer and curator whose career was so rich and varied that it seems like a lesson in the contemporary history of the medium. Although well known in his native Italy, Ghirri does not yet have the international audience his work merits–perhaps because he died so young. “It’s Beautiful Here, Isn’t It…”–the first book published on Ghirri in the U.S.–will establish him as the seminal artist he was. Uncannily prescient, Ghirri shared the sensibility of what became known in the U.S. as the New Color and the New Topographics movements before they had even been named. Like his counterparts in Italian cinema, Ghirri believed that the local and the universal were inseparable and that life’s polarities–love and hate, present and past–were equally compelling. Not surprisingly, his interests encompassed all the arts: he worked in Giorgio Morandi’s studio and with architect Aldo Rossi, while influencing a generation of photographers, including Olivo Barbieri and Martin Parr. This dynamic new book includes a selection of Ghirri’s essays published in English for the first time, as well as a selected chronology.

This monograph is the first in English on a seminal artist, who, perhaps more than any other, helped to put an end to the marginalization of women in the Italian art scene, and who co-founded the Forma 1 movement in 1947. Her groundbreaking work in the use of color, and her role as a defender of abstraction during the 1950s, puts her at the forefront of Italian art of the mid-twentieth century.

Jim Dine (b. 1935) is one of America’s best-known image-makers. This book, published to accompany the first major exhibition of Dine’s work from the 1960s, reproduces a broad selection of his early mixed-media works, paintings, and sculptures. Many of the works featured in this volume contain elements of the now-familiar themes of Dine’s career: tools, robes, hearts, palettes, and domestic interiors. Bringing together fascinating performance photographs with vivid full-color reproductions, the book is the first to explore the complex relationship between Dine’s mixed-media works and his environments and theater pieces.

Catalogo di particolare fascino e pregio editoriale pubblicato nel 1965 in occasione delle mostre organizzate a Torino per celebrare il V Centenario dell’introduzione dell’Arte della stampa in Italia. Di particolare interesse la sezione che si occupa del linguaggio grafico nella comunicazione visiva, a cura di Giovanni Brunazzi e Germano Celant, con un testo di Umbro Apollonio e la documentazione dei lavori di numerosi artisti e grafici tra i quali: Getulio Alviani, Giovanni Anceschi, Alberto Biasi, Agostino Bonalumi, Davide Boriani, Eugenio Carmi, Dadamaino, Bruno Munari e molti altri.

Winner of the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2003, Michelangelo Pistoletto is acclaimed worldwide as a foremost exponent of Arte Povera and conceptual art. For his exhibition at the Serpentine, the artist has devised a site-specific labyrinthine installation that guides visitors through the Gallery’s interior spaces to discover a series of sculptural works concealed within.

Book as Artwork 1960/1972 was the first catalogue devoted to the then new medium of the artist’s book and it remains a canonical reference (though one that, due to its scarcity, is not as well known as it should be). This publication started as an article and a list of about 80 artists’ books which appeared in 1970 in the first issue of the Italian magazine Arte. Not long after it was translated and published in Data magazine. Then in 1972 the Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of artists’ books and issued a catalogue with a greatly expanded bibliography (now nearly 300 titles) compiled by Lynda Morris. The exhibition was the first of its kind and the catalogue a genuinely historic publication.

Through his use of such unorthodox materials as bread, blood, excrement, silicon, ice, and, more recently, plants and flowers, Marc Quinn works with the fundamental constituents of our existence. His analysis of the physical nature of the body and the mysteries associated with it are expanded in this novel kaleidoscope of a book. Containing images of classical sculptures, old paintings, scenes of war, disasters, car and plane crashes, portraits of disabled people, works by other contemporary artists, scientific photographs, and a selection of works and photographs by Quinn himself, this book constitutes a fascinating, associative approach to a body of work which concerns questions that often have no answers. Included are critical essays, an interview with the artist, and conversations between him and the people portrayed in his sculptures.

For Walter De Maria, hurricanes, floods, and sandstorms–natural disasters–are “the highest form of art possible to experience.” Through such monumental works as “The Lightening Field,” a permanent installation in New Mexico which fuses the natural phenomena of lighting with the artistic process, De Maria has had a lasting and decisive impact on the orientation of art since the 1960s. This unique artist’s book, one of only a few publications on this seminal artist, intermingles De Maria’s sculptures with the city of Milan through a portfolio of black-and-white photographs by Nanda Lanfranco, produced in close collaboration with the artist, which reveal various crossroads of this Italian metropolis. Essay by Germano Celant. Foreword by Walter De Maria. Preface by Miuccia Prada.

Per la prima volta insieme tutti gli scritti di Germano Celant relativi ad un gruppo di artisti composto da Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolmi, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Punì e Gilberto Zorio, per cui egli stesso conia, nel 1967, il termine “Arte povera”. Il volume è un insieme di testi teorici, incentrati sia sulla poetica del movimento che sul linguaggio dei singoli protagonisti, e punta l’attenzione sull’aspetto contingente quanto sul lato frammentario, contraddittorio e pluralistico del loro fare arte. Ma soprattutto è un aggiornamento esaustivo di una riflessione ferma al 1985, anno in cui il volume dal titolo “Arte povera, storie e protagonisti”, ad opera dello stesso Celant, non venne mai distribuito e, circolando solo tra gli addetti, divenne un cult introvabile. Quel volume viene oggi riproposto, in una copia anastatica, all’interno del nuovo libro, come punto di partenza e spunto per una nuova riflessione. Dal 1967 ad oggi il linguaggio dell’Arte povera è arrivato ad utilizzare acqua e pietra, fuoco ed elettricità, parole e idee fino a coinvolgere animali e vegetali, che assumono un’importanza particolare per il loro appartenere al mondo del primario e dell’essenziale. Una ricerca da sempre impegnata in un atteggiamento de-costruttivo, che tiene conto della molteplicità dei linguaggi espressivi in rapporto al contesto in cui nascono.

Testi di Germano Celant: “MusicaedanzainUSA”; JoleDeSanna:“Appuntisuunmezzo”, Daniela Palazzoli: “Videotapeevideoarte”; Lea Vergine: “Usi e abusi del corpo nellabody-art”. Milano, Centro Internazionale di Brera, Piazza Formentini, 27-28-29-30 maggio 1974. In copertina “Placenta azzurra” di Franco Vaccari.

Marcello Morandini has become a reference point for designers around the world. This catalogue features 40 works of art and 40 design products organized by theme, and illustrating his importance in the fields of sculpture, graphic design, industrial design and urban planning.