From the 2013 retrospective at the Prada Foundation in Venice, curated by Germano Celant, to the recent exhibition at the Collection Pinault in Paris, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Arte Povera seems to never go out of style. To better understand the impact it continues to have and the reasons why it appears more relevant today than ever, we must return to its roots.

The first appearance of those who would become known as “poor artists” or “poverists” was in 1967, in Genoa, during an exhibition organized at the Galleria La Bertesca by owner Francesco Masnata and young art critic Germano Celant. The term “Arte Povera” was coined shortly thereafter in the article “Arte Povera: Notes for a Guerrilla,” also written by Celant and published in Flash Art.

Often quoted and rarely read, Celant’s text possesses all the characteristics of a manifesto, despite lacking any explicit intentions. It is not highly programmatic but impresses with its clear analysis of the world, starting from the voracious nature of consumer society and anticipating a guerrilla movement that, with the approach of the Years of Lead, would indeed shake not only the art world but all of Italy: “The artist, a modern jester, satisfies cultured tastes. Once he has an idea, he lives for and on it. Mass production compels him to create a single object that satisfies the market to the point of addiction. He is not allowed to create and abandon the object to its fate; he must follow it, justify it, and introduce it into the market channels. In this way, the artist replaces the assembly line. From a driving force, a technician, and a specialist in discovery, he becomes a cog in the machine.”

International success for the artists of Arte Povera came about two years later, with “When Attitudes Become Form,” the groundbreaking exhibition organized by Harald Szeemann at the Kunsthalle in Bern. This exhibition highlighted formal similarities and a widespread intention among contemporary artists to deconstruct the world by transcending the methods and languages of minimalism.

In this context, the artists that we now consider to be representatives of 'arte povera', and whose works are now soaring in value, certainly found common ground. We are talking about Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini, Gilberto Zorio, and, initially, Mario Ceroli, Piero Gilardi, Paolo Icaro, and Gianni Piacentino. However, they never formed a true working group. There was never any artistic movement or true 'movement' in the traditional sense of the term. Instead, it was a generation of creatives united by a strong zeitgeist, a keen sensitivity to materials, and, at times, shared political positions.

Germano Celant

The definition of Arte Povera as a movement of artists who use “poor” materials—such as cement, asbestos, and iron, along with earth, water, and wood—now seems outdated. An understanding of Arte Povera in these terms ultimately means everything and nothing, particularly because it holds little significance in an artistic landscape where the use of materials traditionally foreign to artistic techniques has become the norm. This description is inaccurate, a simplification so accessible that it risks becoming dangerously pop and, thus, misleading.

Therefore, there must be something else behind its current success.

More than anything, it is an indescribable art that rejects definitions, let alone descriptions, with a power that can only be experienced in front of the artwork itself. Arte Povera is designed to be lived in an immediate, visceral way. It requires direct contact with its audience for the message to be triggered: it does not seek critics, but rather curators who can help it take center stage and, in doing so, fulfill its purpose. It asks to get one’s hands dirty and brings us back to a concrete interaction with the world.
 

The alleged rejection of “technology” associated with Arte Povera deserves a chapter of its own. The distances that Celant and the artists take from technological determinism do not imply a rejection of technology. On the contrary, Arte Povera marks a turning point in the history of artistic language—one of the oldest technologies, akin to agriculture. The goal is to oppose traditional art by reducing the artwork to its essentials, striving for an artistic revolution that places humanity at the center and escapes the logic of the production system. The method involves simplifying the language of the artwork until it is reduced to its essence: only then can a truly contemporary work be achieved, and with it, the revolution.

This is how Pistoletto’s Mirrored Paintings are born—renewed mirrors; Merz’s igloos, a contemporary interpretation of a primitive form; Pascali's seas and Boetti’s maps, which reinvent precisely what they represent. Arte Povera, immediate and ephemeral, does not create fetishes but inserts fragments of reality into a parallel discourse, challenging the values of conservation, permanence, and uniqueness upon which the entire art system is based.

Decades later, Arte Povera remains difficult to preserve and impossible to reproduce in the same way—stubborn and untameable. And while its creators yield to the allure of press, museums, and fairs, it continues to watch us slyly, resting on pedestals or suspended on immaculate drywall panels. Amused by the recognition from the very system it critiques, it performs its greatest trick. It asks us whether a guerrilla, especially one conducted through art, is truly still possible today.