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Michelangelo Pistoletto, born in 1933 in Biella in Italy, is a contemporary artist, painter and sculptor, known for being part of the Arte Povera movement. He worked under his father in Turin from 1947 to 1958 as a painting restorer. In the 1950 and 60s he started making figurative paintings, including self-portraitsand photo-silkscreened images of people, life-size and on reflective steel, were intended both to integrate the environment and the viewer into his work and to question the nature of reality and representation. Mirrored surfaces recur throughout Pistoletto’s oeuvre.

Also in 60s Pistoletto began to pursue performance art, an interest that would expand over his career to encompass film, video, and theater. Pistoletto presented collaborative “actions” meant to unify art and daily existence, these performances took place in his studio, in public institutions such as schools and theaters, and on the streets of Turin and other cities.

In 1974 he passed a ski instructor’s exam and spent much of his time in the mountain town of San Sicario.

He has participated twelve times – from 1966 to 2011- in the Venice Biennale, and four times in Documenta in Kassel, from 1968 to 1997.

In 1996, Pistoletto founded the art city Cittadelarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, hosted in a discarded textile factory near Biella. Conceived as both a centre and workshop, it aims to bring art into different spheres of society, in order to inspire and produce responsible social change.

Pistoletto’s engagement in social issues and his interest in symbology prompted the artist’s most recent artistic phase, Third Paradise (begun in 2004), and his envisioning of the new infinity sign.

Pistoletto lives and works in Biella and Turin.

Welcome to the art talk on October 29, 12.15-13, in the Marie-Louise Ekman room (328).