Michelangelo PISTOLETTO

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in 1933 in Biella, Italy. He lives and works in Turin.

At the age of 20, Michelangelo Pistoletto practiced art in the workshop of his father, a painter and restorer in Turin, and at the end of the 1950s he produced self-portraits on monochrome gold or silver backgrounds, then on painting covered with varnish, reflective surface which integrates the viewer into the painting and gives him the idea of ​​mirrors. In the 1960s, he used scrap materials to challenge society's consumerism, a problem posed by the Italian Arte Povera movement to which he belonged. In the 1970s and 1980s, the artist created installations that invite the viewer to question social issues, particularly religious and political. In 1998, he inaugurated Cittadellarte, his foundation installed in a former factory in Biella, which brings together various disciplines in order to rethink the relationship between art and society.