Artist
Piero Manzoni
Piero Manzoni, born in Soncino in 1933 in an aristocratic family, attended the faculties of law and philosophy without finishing his studies. After having created some traditional landscapes, in the second half of the 1950s he started towards an intense research of experimentation conducted, progressively, both on a technical-material level and on an aesthetic-conceptual one. He initially approaches the abstract-informal experiences of Burri, Fontana and Fautrier. In 1955 he began creating a series of works by immersing objects in color and imprinting their imprint on the canvas; paintings made with tar followed and, in 1956, he published the manifesto Per la scoperta di una zona di immagini (For the discovery of an area of images).
In 1957 he exhibited at the Galleria Pater in Milan with Sordini and Verga and joined the Nuclear Group by co-signing the Manifesto contro lo stile (Manifesto against style). From the end of 1957 he made his first Achromes, white paintings made with canvas soaked in raw plaster. The Achromes series will follow with surfaces covered with white matter which he defined as “kaolin” (1958), felt, cotton wool and expanded polystyrene (1960), glass wool (1961), bread and stones (1962) and other materials. After the definitive separation from the Nuclear Group, in 1959 he met Castellani, Bonalumi and Agnetti; with Castellani he founded the magazine "Azimuth" and the homonymous Milanese gallery. From that moment on he developed an increasingly conceptual approach by creating the first Lines. For years he has held numerous international contacts, traveling and exhibiting in particular between Holland, Denmark and Germany. Create forty-five Corpi d’aria (Air bodies): common balloons to be inflated and put on a pedestal and then the Fiati d’artista (Artist's Winds).
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