Michelangelo Pistoletto, Olympic Balloons, Screen Print on Aluminium, 1984

Screen print on aluminium Sheet. Hand signed. One of the 20 Artist’s Proof, numbered and hand signed. The Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, one of the most important exponents of “Arte Povera” movement, realized this artwork for 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Includes a contemporary acrylic glass frame. Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933) Michelangelo Pistoletto is an Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist born in Biella, in 1933. He is now one of the great exponents of Italian and indeed international contemporary art with over sixty years of experience. from a young age he worked in his fathers’ restoration workshop but in the Fifties he began painting figurative works and self-portraits. In 1959 he participated to the Biennale di San Marino and one year later he hosted his first solo-exhibition at the Galleria Galatea in Turin. In the Sixties Pistoletto combined painting with photography using collage techniques on reflective backgrounds and eventually moved to printing photorealistic scenes on steel plates polished to a high finish which he achieved using the screen-printing method which allowed the observer to almost completely melt into what was depicted. In the mid-Sixties he gained international audience thanks to gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend, and begun exhibiting his work in the USA, where he had his first solo-exhibit at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. In 1967 he was awarded first prize at the Biennale de São Paulo but later that year he begun focusing on performance, video-art and theatre which led him to found the action art group called “Zoo Group”. Pistoletto also began painting on mirrors in early in his career, attempting to connect painting with the constantly changing realities in which the work finds itself. As he explored this form he began bringing together rags with casts of omnipresent classical statuary of Italy in order to break down the hierarchies of art and common objects. The use of impoverished materials as a form of art is a clear indication of Pistoletto’s approach to the Arte Povera. Although being influenced by the American "post-pop art" and photorealism, Pistoletto was soon listed by gallery owners and critics as a significant representative of the mostly Italian trend of the Arte Povera. The aim of his work was always that to display the unity of art and everyday life.