The term Arte Povera (Ital. poor art) was coined on 27 September 1967 by the art critic and curator Germano Celant after he showed an exhibition of works by six Italian artists - Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Pino Pascali, Giulio Paolini and Emilio Prini - entitled Arte povera e IM spazio (Eng.: Poor art and IM space) in his home town of Genoa.
Arte Povera stands for a movement of visual artists from Rome and northern Italy from the second half of the 1960s and the 1970s.
1965-today
Arte Povera
Arte Povera works are typically spatial installations made of "poor", i.e. ordinary and everyday materials (earth, broken glass, wood, string, etc.).
One of the first venues was "Aktionsraum 1", a hall founded in Munich in 1969 by Alfred Gulden and friends, where action and conceptual art as well as Arte Povera were shown.
The most important collection of Arte Povera artists outside Italy is now in the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein.
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