In 1967 Germano Celant, then a twenty-seven-year-old critic, first used the phrase Arte Povera to gather under one label a group of Italian artists who had little in common stylistically and a great deal in common in attitude. "Poor" did not mean cheap: it meant stripped. Stripped of noble technique, of the pedestal, of the picture as a luxury object.
The movement's centre is Turin, an industrial city living through both the factory boom and its contestation. That is not incidental: much of these artists' material — iron, glass, neon, tubing — came from the productive world around them.
1. Michelangelo Pistoletto, *Venus of the Rags* (1967)
A plaster cast of a classical Venus, seen from behind, facing a heap of coloured rags. It is the movement's most reproduced image because it stages the whole argument at once: the codified beauty of tradition against the formless, used matter of the present. Neither wins, and that is the point.
2. Mario Merz, the *Igloos* (from 1968)
Hemispherical structures of metal, glass and clay, sometimes crossed by neon lettering. For Merz the igloo is the primary form of dwelling: a shelter that can be assembled anywhere, without foundations. Many works carry the Fibonacci sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two before it — a way of letting natural growth into a sculpture made of industrial materials.
3. Jannis Kounellis, *Untitled (12 Horses)* (1969)
Twelve live horses tethered to the walls of a Roman gallery. For a few days the exhibition space stopped being a place of contemplation and became a stable. It is the work that pushes to its limit the idea that the material of art can be anything at all, including something that breathes.
4. Giovanni Anselmo, *Eating Structure* (1968)
A block of granite, a smaller block, and between them a fresh lettuce held by a copper wire. When the lettuce wilts, the structure slackens and the smaller block falls. To keep existing, the work must be fed. It may be the most exact definition of what these artists meant by "process": not a finished object, but something that happens over time.
5. Giuseppe Penone, *Twelve-Metre Tree* (1980)
Penone takes an industrial beam and carves it back along its growth rings until the young tree the beam once contained reappears. It is sculpture by subtraction, and also a claim: worked timber has not stopped being a tree, it has only forgotten.
Where to see it now
The reference point is the Castello di Rivoli, just outside Turin, Italy's first museum devoted to contemporary art and the natural home of this work. In the city itself, the guide to art in Turin and the modern art section carry the local context.
Why it still matters
Arte Povera permanently moved the boundary of what can count as artistic material. Every time a contemporary author today uses a non-noble support — industrial paper, textile, salvaged matter — they are working inside a space these artists opened. That is a good reason to look at them before buying anything contemporary: they sharpen the eye on what separates a material decision from a shortcut.