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Piero Manzoni
Merda d'Artista - Merde d'Artiste - Artist's Shit

2013

About the Item

Piero Manzoni Merda d'Artista - Merde d'Artiste - Artist's Shit, 2013 Sealed tin can in special offset lithograph paper and shrink wrapped sealed with a fingerprint The artist's signature is plate stamped on the top of the work with the unique number 75 stamped on the top. Edition 16/9000 2 1/2 × 3 inches The artist's signature is plate stamped on the top of the work with the unique number 16 stamped on the top. It is shrink wrapped and sealed with a finger print The inscription on the underside reads: Piero Manzoni/1963-2013/Merda d'artista dell'anniversario/Maggio 2013/Prodotta e inscatolata da:/Fondazione Piero Manzoni/Milano, numbered 16 Conceptual artist Piero Manzoni, an enfant terrible of Italian art in the 1950s and early 1960s, is best known for Artist's Shit (Merda d'artista) (1961), 90 sealed cans priced by their weight in gold, one of many works that question the nature of the art object. Other stunts included balloons filled with "artist's breath" and “Living Sculptures,” human subjects signed by Manzoni. His “Achromes” paintings (from 1957 onward), canvases covered in materials like gesso, kaolin, fabric, and bread that undergo sagging, creasing, and other temporal changes, suggest the influence of Yves Klein and Robert Rauschenberg. The present work is descriptive of Manzoni’s ironic and perverse style. Calling into play his specific dialogue with the relationship between art production and human production, the current lot is a reproduction of the artist's seminal work, “Merda d’Artista," in which Manzoni packaged multiple 30mg tins of his excrement as if it was manufactured for sale. More about Piero Manzoni: The renowned Italian artist Piero Manzoni emerged as a powerful voice for the avant-garde in the 1950s, debuting as an artist at the ‘4a Fiera mercato: Mostra d’arte contemporanea’ in 1956. A self-taught painter, his work heavily featured anthropomorphic silhouettes and the impressions of objects. He began making his ‘white paintings’—later named ‘Achromes’—in 1957, at first with rough gesso and then with kaolin, as well as with creased canvases or surfaces divided into squares. In 1959, the artist began his series which experimented with the display of inflated white balloons. The results—‘Corpi d’aria (Bodies of Air)' and ‘Fiato d’artista (Artist’s Breath),’ where balloons were poised on a tripod or wooden plinth—extended the creative experimentation first visualized in the ‘Achromes’ as Manzoni embarked upon works that used an entirely new visual language, reframing artistic interpretation. In July 1960, he presented ‘Consumazione dell’arte / dinamica del pubblico / divorare l’arte’ in Milan, during which he offered the public hard-boiled eggs with his thumbprint on them. By 1961, Manzoni was signing actual people, turning them into ‘living sculptures,’ and awarding them with a certificate of authenticity. Alongside his work as an abstract avant-garde painter, Manzoni contributed to and collaborated with numerous artist groups and initiatives. As his artistic activity intensified, he began participating in group shows and signing manifestos alongside other artists, including Enrico Baj, Guido Biasi, Ettore Sordini, and Angelo Verga. For a period of time he embraced the Movimento Arte Nucleare, before abandoning it in 1958. On several occasions, he showed his work with Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani, and he collaborated with artists of the Zero group in Düsseldorf and other European neo-avant-garde groups. In 1959, he founded the Galleria Azimut in Milan with Castellani, opening the gallery with an exhibition of his ‘Linee (Lines).’ The pair simultaneously published two issues of the Azimuth magazine. The second issue (1960) included one of Manzoni’s seminal texts ‘Libera dimensione’ or ‘Free dimension.’ - Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
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