Portatore di zucche

Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933)
Collection : Fonds d'art contemporain de la Ville de Genève (FMAC)

Portatore di zucche (Squash Bearer) is one of the series of large, archaistic marble statues created by the Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto in the 1980s. He first presented this statue at a public park in Genthod during the 1985 exhibition Promenades, held under the aegis of Geneva’s Centre d'art contemporain. It was immediately acquired by the Fonds d’art contemporain de la Ville de Genève, and today it is once again standing in a park: the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques. Inspired by Roman and Renaissance statuary, Portatore di zucche consists of dissimilar stones whose surfaces and volumes have been treated differently: white, smooth Carrara marble contrasts with red Verona rock and black Gruciano stone, cut crudely in several places by the sculptor’s chisel. The figure is an assemblage of composite fragments, one that has the irregular, discontinuous appearance of something deliberately left in a state of incompletion. It perfectly embodies the esthetic concerns of the artist, who seeks to highlight the idea of ruptures and accidents. Stemming from the Arte Povera movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s approach mixes spirituality, humanism, philosophy and politics. Sculpture enables him to interweave these different notions with a reflection on the question of representation.
Article commissioned by P3Art
Notice: Séverine Fromaigeat, translation: Matthew Cunningham  

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