One of the key protagonists of the Italian 1960s Arte Povera movement, Giovanni Anselmo has died aged 89. Untitled: Sculpture that Eats (1968) in which a piece of lettuce fills the space between two blocks of granite, threatening the integrity of the structure as it wilts, has become one of the artworks most associated with Arte Povera, the movement theorised by curator Germano Celant as using natural and industrial materials that are ‘poor’ – that is, in opposition to the rich materials associated with art traditionally, from marble to gold leaf. Arte Povera artists like Anselmo, Jannis Kounellis and Marisa Merz have come to define postwar art in Italy.
Born in a small village just outside Turin in 1934, the artist spent the majority of his life and career in the city, where the major museum Castello di Rivoli celebrated his work with a major retrospective in 2016. He participated in the Venice Biennales of 1978, 1980 and 1990 – when he won the Golden Lion Award – as well as Documenta V (1972) and VII (1982). A new exhibition of his work, Giovanni Anselm: Beyond the Horizon, is slated to open at the Guggenheim Bilbao in February 2024.
