Miami--Currently on view through April 30, 2022, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse presents Arte Povera / Postwar Italian Art from the Margulies Collection, a historically significant exhibition of Italy’s highly innovative twentieth-century art movement, as seen through the lens of one of its earliest and most significant American collectors. The exhibition features 18 major works spanning six decades, from the early 1960s through the 2000s by seven of the most prominent artists associated with the group of Italian artists jointly known as “i poveristi”: Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Mario Merz.
In addition to the powerful and iconic Arte Povera works on view, the exhibition includes didactic materials about the history of the dealers, collectors, gallerists and curators who supported these Italian artists at the critical early stages of their careers. A twentyminute video plays on a loop, telling the story of the life and times of the influential dealer and collector Christian Stein whose seminal gallery in Turin and Milan nurtured and preserved the early activities and vision of the Arte Povera artists. Additionally, the exhibition includes an array of educational materials that give the viewer an overview of what was happening in Postwar Italian art, most notably the activities of the community of galleries in Turin and the dealer Gian Enzo Sperone, along with a tribute to the late Italian curator Germano Celant who is today considered one of the most influential curators of our times.
“We wanted to give our audience the backdrop of the social reawakening that defined Italy in the 1960s when Italians began to embrace an identity characterized by industrialization which at the same time paid homage to the country’s rich cultural heritage. It was important to us to explain the context of how this disparate group of artists, living and working in isolation in different regions of Italy rejected the values of established culture and embraced new creative possibilities by confronting longstanding notions of how art could be made and exhibited,” says longtime curator Katherine Hinds who organized the exhibition. “Our mission with our exhibitions at the Warehouse is always educational and we think the Arte Povera exhibition fulfills our mission perfectly by bringing together these influential and important Postwar Italian artists who have never been seen before in this region of the United States.”