Pittore In Africa
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In February 1984, the legendary Sperone Westwater gallery in New York presented Pittore in Africa, a remarkable artist's book by the pioneering Italian Arte Povera master Mario Merz, documenting his visceral and transformative encounter with the African continent. The work chronicles Merz's journey through Africa, presenting his raw, immediate visual responses to landscapes and life that stand in stark contrast to the industrialised, neon-lit igloo constructions for which he is globally renowned. Merz, one of the most significant figures of the late 20th-century avant-garde, consistently argued that art must engage with primal energies — the Fibonacci sequence in nature, the communal gathering around fire, the unmediated mark of the painter — and Pittore in Africa illustrates this philosophy with an urgent, almost feverish intensity. As both a visual record and an artistic manifesto, this rare publication holds an important place in the canon of Arte Povera, leaving the viewer to wonder what the ancient landscape ultimately revealed to one of Europe's most radical artistic minds.
Author: Mario Merz
Format: Paperback
Published: 1984, Sperone Westwater
Genre: The arts
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
In February 1984, the legendary Sperone Westwater gallery in New York presented Pittore in Africa, a remarkable artist's book by the pioneering Italian Arte Povera master Mario Merz, documenting his visceral and transformative encounter with the African continent. The work chronicles Merz's journey through Africa, presenting his raw, immediate visual responses to landscapes and life that stand in stark contrast to the industrialised, neon-lit igloo constructions for which he is globally renowned. Merz, one of the most significant figures of the late 20th-century avant-garde, consistently argued that art must engage with primal energies — the Fibonacci sequence in nature, the communal gathering around fire, the unmediated mark of the painter — and Pittore in Africa illustrates this philosophy with an urgent, almost feverish intensity. As both a visual record and an artistic manifesto, this rare publication holds an important place in the canon of Arte Povera, leaving the viewer to wonder what the ancient landscape ultimately revealed to one of Europe's most radical artistic minds.