The exhibition of the master Michelangelo Pistoletto opens in Tirana, "Artivision for a responsible social transformation"

2024-05-20 17:32:00, Kulturë CNA

The exhibition of the master Michelangelo Pistoletto opens in Tirana,

The Center for Openness and Dialogue and the Italian Institute of Culture has announced the opening of the exhibition "Artivization for a responsible social transformation", of the internationally renowned master Michelangelo Pistoletto, curated by the "Pistoletto Cittadellarte Foundation".

The exhibition will open on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 in the premises of COD, the Prime Minister's Office. Spread throughout its spaces, the exhibition narrates art as an expression of thought, that the artist undertakes the responsibility to put every human activity into communication, from economics to politics, from science to religion, from education to behavior. In short... all social views.

Divided into four rooms and eight stops, this exhibition will focus on: "Loving the different", "Mirror works", "Cosmology", "Ecology", "Mythology", "Nutrition", "Writing" and "Metaverse" ". The exhibition reviews the guidelines of the art project through the works of the master and the birth and development of the "Cittadellarte" and the "Third Paradise" in the idea of ??a "global civilization" that eliminates distances while preserving differences.

The selection of works to be exhibited at COD emphasizes the role of the craftsman and artification, a concept created by the "Pistoletto" Cittadellarte Foundation, which combines two words: "art" and "activation". As a representation of the idea of ??using art as an active tool to stimulate, engage and activate social change. It is an approach that goes beyond artistic expression, encouraging artists and people who work with art to become active agents of transformation through their works and their interactions with society.

This exhibition started with the invitation sent by the Italian Institute of Culture in Tirana, in collaboration with the "Pistoletto Cittadellarte Foundation" and the Center for Openness and Dialogue (COD), with curatorial and project management by Mr. Francesco Saverio Teruzzi and exhibition project management by Mr. Alessandro Lacirasella. The exhibition brings to Tirana the work of one of the greatest masters of world art, Michelangelo Pistoletto, famous both for the great artistic importance of his works, and for the message of social transformation, dialogue and acceptance of differences, art of which he is the bearer.

Michelangelo Pistoletto

The exhibition will remain open to the public at the Center for Openness and Dialogue (COD) from May 22 to July 2, 2024 and entry will be free.

Who is Michelangelo Pistoletto?

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biela, in 1933.

He began exhibiting in 1955 and in 1960 he held his first solo exhibition at the Galatea Gallery in Turin. His first creations in painting are characterized by a search for self-portrait. In the two-year period 1961 - 1962, he arrived at the realization of the Mirror Works, which include directly in the work the presence of the spectator, the real dimension of time and also reopen the perspective, reversing that of the Renaissance closed by the avant-gardes of the 20th century. With these works, Pistoletto quickly achieved international recognition and success, which led him to realize, during the sixties, personal exhibitions in prestigious galleries and museums in Europe and the United States of America. The mirror works will form the foundation of his later artistic creativity and theoretical reflection.

Between 1965 and 1966 he produced a set of works entitled Lesser Objects, which are considered fundamental to the birth of Poor Art, an artistic movement for which Pistoletto is the creator and protagonist. Starting from 1967, outside the traditional exhibition spaces, he carried out activities that represent the first performances of that "creative collaboration" that Pistoletto would develop during the following decades, creating connections between artists coming from different fields and increasingly diverse sectors. society wide. Between 1975 and 1976, he realized at the Stein Gallery in Turin a cycle of twelve successive exhibitions, Rooms, the first of a series of complex works spread over the span of a year, called "continents of time", such as the White Year ( 1989) and The Happy Turtle (1992).

In 1978 he opened an exhibition during which he presented two main directions of his future artistic research and creativity: Division and multiplication of the mirror and Art acquires religion.

Michelangelo Pistoletto

In the early eighties he created a series of rigid polyurethane sculptures, transformed into marble, for his 1984 solo exhibition at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence. From 1985 to 1989 he created a series of "dark" volumes called The Art of Misery.

During the nineties, with the Art Project and the creation in Biela of the Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation and of the University of Ideas, it placed art in active connection with the various areas of society in order to inspire and produce a responsible transformation of society.

In 2003 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. In 2004 the University of Turin awarded him the Laurea Honoris Causa in Political Science. At that event, the artist made public what constitutes the latest phase of his work, called the Third Heaven.

In 2007, he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts in Jerusalem, "for a consistently creative career as an artist, educator and activist, whose unstoppable intelligence has given life to pioneering art forms that contribute to a new understanding of the world." In 2010, he was the author of the essay The Third Paradise, published in Italian, English, French and German. In 2012, he became the promoter of Rebirth-day, the first world day of rebirth, celebrated every year on December 21 with initiatives carried out around the world.

In 2013 the Louvre Museum in Paris hosted Michelangelo Pistoletto's first solo exhibition, annéè un – le paradis sur terre. This same year he received Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo for painting.

He has been awarded several laurea honoris causa in art by: the Universidad de las Artes de L'Avana, the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania, Florence and Lecce and by the University of Basilicata.

He is an Honorary Citizen of the Cities of Palermo, Sarajevo and Sanremo.

In the park of the Palace of Nations in Geneva, the headquarters of the United Nations Organization, there is the monumental sculpture Rebirth, a reflection of the Third Heaven, realized with stones from 193 UN member countries.

In 2017, his text Hominiteism and Demopraxia, a manifesto for a regeneration of society, was published.

In 2021 it was inaugurated at the Cittadellarte Universari, an exhibition space where the artist presented his latest research, and in December 2022 his last book, The Formula of Creation, was published, where he goes through the fundamental steps and the evolution of his entire artistic journey and of his theoretical reflection.

In 2023, he inaugurated with a long interview the importance of education in peace processes at the biennial Meeting of Ministers of Education in UNESCO./ CNA