Piero Manzoni Quotes

Piero Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo, better known as Piero Manzoni was an Italian artist best known for his ironic approach to avant-garde art. Often compared to the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticipated, and directly influenced, the work of a generation of younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera exhibition held in Genoa, 1967. Manzoni is most famous for a series of artworks that call into question the nature of the art object, directly prefiguring Conceptual Art. His work eschews normal artist's materials, instead using everything from rabbit fur to human excrement in order to "tap mythological sources and to realize authentic and universal values".His work is widely seen as a critique of the mass production and consumerism that was changing Italian society after World War II. Italian artists such as Manzoni had to negotiate the new economic and material order of post-war Europe through inventive artistic practices which crossed geographic, artistic, and cultural borders.

Manzoni died of myocardial infarction in his studio in Milan on February 6, 1963. His contemporary Ben Vautier signed Manzoni's death certificate, declaring it a work of art. Wikipedia  

✵ 13. July 1933 – 6. February 1963
Piero Manzoni photo
Piero Manzoni: 16   quotes 0   likes

Famous Piero Manzoni Quotes

“.. a single uninterrupted and continuous surface from which anything superfluous and all interpretative possibilities are excluded. [referring to his 'Achromes', Manzoni started to make in 1957]”

Quote of Manzoni, in Display Caption of 'Achrome' 1958 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/manzoni-achrome-t01871', Tate, July 2008]

“I sell an idea, an idea in a can.”

Quote of Manzoni, (refering to his art-work in 1961 'Artist Shit'); as cited on 'Heart', in the aricle 'More about Piero Manzoni' http://www.heartmus.dk/en/about-heart/our-collection/piero-manzoni/more-about-piero-manzoni.html

Piero Manzoni Quotes about art

“When I blow up a balloon, I am breathing my soul into an object that becomes eternal. [Manzoni's quote of 1960, referring to his art-work 'Artist's Breath']”

Source: 'Piero Manzoni', exhibition catalogue, Serpentine Gallery, London 1998, p.144

Piero Manzoni Quotes

“I would like to draw a white line covering the complete Greenwich meridian.”

Source: De Tweede Helft', Ad de Visser, 1998, p. 160

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