During the Day, 20 AMACI member museums and about 400 Italian organizations and institutions working in the field of contemporary art opened their collections, as well as the exhibitions and events promoted for the occasion, to the public free of charge. The result was a map of current art, involving not only large cities, but also smaller towns that have always been very active, where museums have taken on the role of cultural hubs with the mission of presenting and enhancing the work of contemporary artists.
Starting with this edition, Giornata del Contemporaneo was promoted each year by an image created for the occasion by the best-known and most appreciated Italian artists on the international scene. For the second edition it was Michelangelo Pistoletto‘s Division and Multiplication of the Mirror.
Every year AMACI associates Giornata del Contemporaneo with a “good” occasion in which to spread a message of solidarity and social responsibility. During the Second Giornata del Contemporaneo, it was ABA (Bulimia Anorexia Association) that communicated at AMACI museums its project of prevention, information and research on eating disorders.
The Second Giornata del Contemporaneo was also proposed as the annual event to engage and raise awareness regarding the role of contemporary art in the development of cultural identity and social and economic innovation. For this reason, AMACI has built, with the strategic support of Goodwill, a system for the sustainability of contemporary art in Italy, to which public and private entities are called to adhere (Banca Popolare di Bergamo, Branch No. 920, c/c 73199, CIN M, ABI 05428, CAB 11102, IBAN IT30 M054 2811 1020 0000 007).
MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1933. He began to exhibit his work in 1955 and in 1960 he had his first solo show at Galleria Galatea in Turin. An inquiry into self-portraiture characterizes his early work.
In the two-year period 1961-1962 made the first Mirror Paintings, which directly include the viewer and real time in the work, and open up perspective, reversing the Renaissance perspective that had been closed by the twentieth-century avant-gardes. These works quickly brought Pistoletto international acclaim, leading, in the sixties, to one-man shows in important galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. The Mirror Paintings are the foundation of his subsequent artistic output and theoretical thought.
In 1965 and 1966 he produced a set of works entitled Minus Objects, considered fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera, an art movement of which Pistoletto was an animating force and a protagonist. In 1967 he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades by bringing together artists from different disciplines and diverse sectors of society. In 1975-76 he presented a cycle of twelve consecutive exhibitions, Le Stanze, at the Stein Gallery in Turin. This was the first of a series of complex, year-long works called “time continents”. Others are White Year (1989) and Happy Turtle (1992). In 1978, in a show in Turin, Pistoletto defined two main directions his future artwork would take: Division and Multiplication of the Mirror and Art Takes On Religion.
In the early eighties he made a series of sculptures in rigid polyurethane, translated into marble for his solo show in 1984 at Forte di Belvedere in Florence. From 1985 to 1989 he created the series of “dark” volumes called Art of Squalor. During the nineties, with Project Art and with the creation in Biella of Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto and the University of Ideas, he brought art into active relation with diverse spheres of society with the aim of inspiring and producing responsible social change.
In 2003 he won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifelong Achievement. In 2004 the University of Turin awarded him a laurea honoris causa in Political Science. On that occasion the artist announced what has become the most recent phase of his work, Third Paradise. In 2007, in Jerusalem, he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in the Arts, “for his constantly inventive career as an artist, educator and activist whose restless intelligence has created prescient forms of art that contribute to fresh understanding of the world.” In 2010 he wrote the essay The Third Paradise, published in Italian, English, French and German.
In 2012 he started promoting the Rebirth-day, first worldwide day of rebirth, celebrated every year on 21st December with initiatives taking place all around the world. In 2013 the Louvre in Paris hosted his personal exhibition Michelangelo Pistoletto, année un – le paradis sur terre. In this same year he received the Praemium Imperiale for painting, in Tokyo.
In May 2015 he received a degree honoris causa from the Universidad de las Artes of Havana in Cuba. In the same year he realizes a work of big dimensions, called Rebirth, situated in the park of the Palais des Nations in Geneva, headquarters of the UN.
In 2017 the text written by Michelangelo Pistoletto Ominitheism and Demopraxy. Manifesto for a regeneration of society was published. In 2021 the Universario, an exhibition space in which the artist presents his most recent research, was inaugurated at Cittadellarte, and in December 2022 his latest book, La formula della creazione, in which he retraces the fundamental steps and the evolution of his entire artistic career and theoretical reflection, was published.
Participating venues: Cemec of la Spezia, Castel Sant’Elmo of Napoli, Castello di Rivoli (Torino), Centro Arti Visive Pescheria of Pesaro, Centro Luigi Pecci of Prato, Cesac of Cuneo, Gam of Torino, Galleria civica d’arte contemporanea of Trento, Galleria civica d’arte contemporanea of Montevergini (Siracusa), Galleria civica of Modena, Galleria comunale d’arte contemporanea of Monfalcone, Galleria d’arte moderna e contemporanea of Bergamo, Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna of Roma, Gam of Bologna, Man of Nuoro, Macro of Roma, Mart of Rovereto (Trento), Maxxi of Roma, Merano Arte of Merano, Museion of Bolzano, Museo del Nocevento of Milano, Pac of Milano, Palazzo delle Papesse of Siena.
Promoted by
AMACI
Supported by
Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali. Dipartimento per i beni culturali e paesaggistici. DARC – Direzione generale per l’architettura e l’arte contemporanee
Under the patronage of
Presidenze del Consiglio dei Ministri
Senato della Repubblica
Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali
Ministero per gli affari esteri
Unione delle province italiane
ICOM Italia
Touring Club Italiano
Official partner
Unicredit Group
Supporting partner
Epoca Insurance srl
