Mario Merz

In 1945, he was arrested and imprisoned and began drawing frenetically. In 1964, he broke with traditional painting, replacing canvases with works made up of heterogeneous materials (i.e. leaves, glass, wax, stone, clothing, umbrellas, baskets, fruits, clay) traversed with neon tubes, like so many energetic traces. The introduction of these organic, “poor” materials prefigured his ultimate artistic approach and his key role in developing the Arte Povera movement, for which he became a major proponent. His contributions, notably his subversion of classic codes and his innovative approaches, made a mark on the history of art. His oeuvre possesses great expressive force and employs some recurrent motifs, such as the igloo, spirals, table, numeric progressions, and animals. As a metaphysical artist, Merz dreamt of a form of harmony between humans and nature. He was also passionate about the Fibonacci sequence, which, according to the artist, corresponded to the symbol of the psychophysical energy of the creative act, and was a key organisational principle of the living world, a concept that is intrinsic to all his oeuvre. In the late 1970s, Merz reconnected with painting, concentrating notably on the figures of mythical animals.

In 1989, he was been the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York. In 2003, the Japan Art Association awarded him the Praemium Imperiale, one of the most prestigious art awards in the world. In 2005, he inaugurated the Fondazione Merz in Turin. The Fondation Cartier has shown his work in the exhibition Mémoires Vives in 2000 and again in 2014.