A new version of Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s sculpture, Venus of Rags in Naples, has been burnt down by a fire in what local police suspect to be an arson attack.
Recreated after the artist’s 1967 original made of cement covered in mica, the monumental sculpture portrays the Roman goddess of love and beauty juxtaposed with tattered rags, pointing to contemporary society’s decay and excess. Several iterations of the piece exist. Naples’s version was mounted two weeks in Piazza Municipio, in the city’s recent artistic revitalisation campaign.
Pistoletto is a key figure in the Arte Povera movement that emerged in Italy between 1967–72. In response to the incident, the artist told local news agency Adnkronos, that the destruction of his artwork reflected how ‘we continue to respond to any offer of beauty, peace and harmony with fire and war’.
After examining footage from surveillance cameras in the neighbourhood, the local police have arrested a 32-year-old homeless man suspected of arson and vandalisation, according to Corriere della Sera.
