Geometry is considered as an accurate and precise science, but, if you're a creative mind, you can be inspired by precise geometries or break and shatter them, coming up with abstract configurations as it happens in the artworks by Marisa Merz, currently on display in the exhibition "Geometrie sconnesse palpiti geometrici" (Disconnected Geometries Geometrical Pulsations; until 12th January 2020). The event is currently on at the Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati in Lugano, Switzerland, a collection part of the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI).
Organised in collaboration with the Fondazione Merz and curated by the daughter of the artist, Beatrice Merz, the event is dedicated to the only female exponent of the Arte Povera group, one of the most outstanding protagonists of the 1960s Italian art scene.
Born in Turin in 1926, Merz debuted on the art scene in the '60s with aluminium laminate sculptures made up of spiral form elements which were both mobile and irregular.
These first works, presented in Turin in June 1967, focused on a research on essential materials, and prepared the artist for her participation in the Arte Povera (Poor Art) movement.
The artist then proceeded to introduce into the language of contemporary sculpture traditional handmade artifacts and pieces inspired by women and domestic labour. In this way she gave artistic dignity to processes and materials belonging to day-to-day life. One of the most striking materials she used around this time was copper wire: Merz employed the latter to make sculptures such as "Scodella di sale" (Bowl of Salt, 1967) or "Scarpette" (Little Shoes, 1968).
In the mid-'70s Merz started creating a series of rooms in complementary spaces – in an open and public gallery and in an underground environment like a cellar, or in her own studio.
During the 1980s she focused on refined portraits of the human form on paper and on polymateric altarpieces, taking part in the 1980 Venice Biennale, in "Identité italianne. L'art en Italie depuis 1959" (1981) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in the exhibition "Avanguardia. Transavanguardia" (1982) at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. More events followed in Naples, London, Rome and New York and, in 2013, she was awarded the Golden Lion for her career at the Venice Biennale.
Merz died in July this year, so this compact exhibition at the Collezione Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati could be considered as a posthumous homage to the artist.
The title of the exhibition – Disconnected Geometries Geometrical Pulsations – is taken from a note written by the artist on a wall of her studio-home and it is a sort of enigma that leads the visitors through the spaces of the exhibition.
The event covers more than fifty years of research and features forty-five works, from drawings on different materials to sculptures in unbaked clay and woven copper wire and nylon objects.
Some of these pieces like the clay heads and the drawings of human faces are particularly poetical: in one 1993 drawing the head of a woman seems to emerge from a series of circular, oblong and squarish shapes, in another portrait on an iron plate a diaphanous face is highlighted by bold turquoise and gold brush strokes.
Among the most striking pieces in the exhibition there are her works from the '70s in copper wire: one of them, a piece suspended between a drawing and a sculpture, occupies an entire wall with knitted squares of copper wire creating an irregular pattern.
But there is more to discover among the works exhibited here for the first time – including drawings and mixed technique pieces on different supports and a refined selection of her celebrated small clay head studies about the human figure.
The exhibition is completed by a selection of artworks from the leading exponents of Arte Povera: on display in another section of the Collezione (that preserves 200 works of art), they underline the importance of the cultural context in which Marisa Merz found herself working at the beginning of her artistic career.
"Disconnected Geometries Geometrical Pulsations" is highly recommended to creative minds who want to approach material studies and the creation of geometrical pieces from an unusual point of view. The final message to this event is easy to grasp: always work freely and try to escape all types of stereotypical pigeonholing by developing your own art language – just like Marisa Merz did.
Image credits for this post
1-3. and 13 – 15. "Marisa Merz. Geometrie sconnesse palpiti geometrici", Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati, 2019. Installation views. Photographs by Agostino Osio – Alto Piano
4.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
1975
Copper wire
4 x 23 x 9 cm each
© Renato Ghiazza
Collection of the artist
Courtesy Fondazione Merz
5.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
1980–1990
Mixed technique on iron plate, copper wire, wooden frame
75 x 54 x 14 cm
© Andrea Rossetti
Private collection
6.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
Unbaked clay, resin, gold paint
18,5 x 26,5 x 16,5 cm (Ø disco)
© Renato Ghiazza
Collection of the artist
Courtesy Fondazione Merz
7.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
1976
Unbaked clay, resin, gold paint, wax
139 x 45 x 46,5 cm
© Roberto Pellegrini
Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati
8.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
2002–2003
Mixed media on paper
100 x 71 cm
© Renato Ghiazza
Collection of the artist
Courtesy Fondazione Merz
9.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
Mixed media on paper
76,5 x 57 cm
© Renato Ghiazza
Collection of the artist
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels
10.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
2008
Mixed media on paper, bamboo sticks
250 × 215 cm
Collection of the artist
Courtesy Galleria Christian Stein, Milano
11.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
1993
graphite on Fabriano paper
164 x 150 cm
© SIK-ISEA, Zürich (Jean-Pierre Kuhn)
Kunst Museum Winterthur
12.
Marisa Merz
Untitled
2002
Mixed media on iron plate
92 x 94 cm
© Roberto Pellegrini
Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati
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