ROME.- A major exhibition/event to recount Arte Povera, the movement that has starred Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio. Arte Povera 2011 curated by Germano Celant will from September be staged in parallel through to March 2012 in various major Italian museums and cultural institutions in Bologna, Milan, Naples, Turin and Rome.

From 7 October 2011 through to 8 January 2012, MAXXI will be presenting A Tribute to Arte Povera: two major installations by Jannis Kounellis and Gilberto Zorio that interact with the Lymph sculptures by Giuseppe Penone, a permanent feature of the museum spaces.

“The research of all three artists started with a reflection on materials and on primal natural elements”, writes Anna Mattirolo, director of MAXXI Arte. “With this tribute MAXXI draws attention to a further phase in their work that has seen them concentrate on the relationship with space. The symbolism of their more recent works continues to make this movement one of the most important legacies for young Italian artists.”

With its dialogue between artificial and natural elements, Penone’s Lymph sculptures, part of the MAXXI Arte collection, synthesises one of the strands of research underlying the Arte Povera movement. Kounellis’s installation (Untitled), welcoming visitors in the museum entrance with its pile of sheet metal, is a symbol of an ancestral culture that sees steel and jute as materials capable of referencing primigenial energies. Its evocative power redesigns the museum atrium, entering into a mute conversation with the exhibition space. Zorio’s work Rome Canoe, created for this occasion and suspended in front of the great glazed wall on the museum’s upper floor, visually involves the external piazza, establishing a luminous and auditory relationship, suspended between light and dark.