GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Mario Merz was born in Milan, Italy in 1925. He studied medicine in Turin, where, during World War II, he became involved with the Italian anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà. He was imprisoned in 1945 for his antifascist activities, and began drawing while in jail. He began as a painter in Turin in the 1950s, influenced by Art Informel. Around 1963, Merz departed from traditional understandings of painting, piercing canvases and incorporating everyday objects such as bottles and umbrellas in his works. By the late 1960s he was involved with arte povera, a term coined by art critic Germano Celant to describe artists working in diverse, experimental ways to explore the intersections of art and life, and of nature and culture, incorporating humble materials in order to protest the inhumanities of industrialization and consumer culture. In 1969 and 1970, Merz began making particular reference to the Fibonacci sequence, which is the underlying mathematical structure of forms such as the shell of a snail and the cultural architectural structure of the igloo. The Fibonacci sequence became a recurring preoccupation in the artist's work. From the 1970s onward, Merz's work became more strongly conceptual, often taking the form of site-specific installation. He died in Turin, Italy, in 2003.
Adapted from
- Allan Schwartzman, "From a Prehistoric Wind," in Fast forward: contemporary collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, eds. María de Corral and John R. Lane (Dallas Museum of Art ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 158-165.
NOTES
He grew up in Turin and attended medical school for two years at the Università degli Studi di Torino. During World War II he joined the anti-fascist group Giustizia e Libertà and was arrested in 1945 and confined to jail, where he drew incessantly on whatever material he could find. In 1950, he began to paint with oil on canvas. His first solo exhibition, held at Galleria La Bussola, Turin, in 1954, included paintings whose organic imagery Merz considered representative of ecological systems. Bu 1966, he began to pierce canvases and objects, such as bottles, umbrellas, and raincoats, with neon tubes, altering th materials by symbolically infusing them with energy.
In 1967, he embarked on an association with several artists, including Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio, which became a loosely defined art movement labeled Arte Povera by critic and curator Germano Celant. This movement was marked by an anti-elitist aesthetic, incorporating humble materials drawn from everyday life and the roganic world in protest of the dehumanizing nature of industrialization and consumer capitalism.
In 1968, Merz adopted one of his signature motifs, the igloo. It was constructed with a metal skeleton and covered with fragments of clay, wax, mud, glass, burlap, and bundles of branches, and often political or literary phrases in neon tubing. He participated in significant international exhibitions of Conceptual, Process, and Minimalist Art, such as Arte povera + azioni povera at Arsenali dell'Antica Repubblica, Amalfi, and Live in Your Head: When Attitude Becomes Form at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1968; the latter exhibition traveled to Krefeld, Germany, and to London. In 1970, Merz began to utilize the Fibonacci formula of mathematical progression within his works, transmitting the concept visually through the use of the numerals and the figure of a spiral. By the time of his first exhibition in the United States at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1972, he had also added stacked newspapers, archetypal animals, and motorcycles to his iconography, to be joined later by the table, symbolic as a locus of the human need for fulfillment and interaction. Merz often responded to the specific environments of his exhibitions by incorporating materials indigenous to the area as well as adjusting the scale of the work to the site.
Mario Merz envisioned the contemporary artists as a nomad, shifting from one environment to another and resisting stylistic uniformity while mediating between nature and culture. From 1968 Merz used the hemispherical form of the igloo—a transitory dwelling—to express his faith in the liberating powers of restlessness with the world and its values. He assembled the rounded structures with segmented, metal armatures, usually covering them with a net and bits of clay, wax, mud, burlap, leather, glass fragments, or bundles of twigs. Phrases making political or literary references, spelled out in neon, often span the domes. The earliest such example, Giap Igloo (1968), bears a slogan attributed to the North Vietnamese military strategist General Vo Nguyen Giap: "If the enemy masses his forces, he loses ground; if he scatters, he loses strength." The contradiction inherent in this phrase captures Merz's conception of the igloo as a momentary shelter that, despite its perpetual relocation, remains a constant.
Merz often used materials indigenous to the sites of his exhibitions to reinforce the nomadic essence of the igloo and its references to a humble economic system close to nature. For a 1979 show in Australia, for instance, he used eucalyptus leaves to blanket an igloo. He also adjusted the structure's scale and intricacy of design—igloos have been pierced by curving tables, surrounded by stacks of newspapers, or clustered in groups—to correspond to the environment in which they are exhibited. Unreal City, created for the Guggenheim Museum's spiraling rotunda on the occasion of the artist's 1989 retrospective, is a tripartite igloo: the large, glass-covered structure is transparent and reveals smaller wood and rubber version nestled within. As in all of Merz's sculptures (and much arte povera work in general), this piece embodies both beauty and violence: the shards of broken glass clamped onto this fragmented edifice are at once delicate and dangerous. The neon phrase "Città irreale" (Italian for "unreal city"), suspended across a wire-mesh triangle on the dome, refers to the intensely subjective, surreal quality of Merz's art. Although the nomadic artist may shift from one location or style or medium to another, creating momentary theaters of meaning, the sites visited are, ultimately and essentially, places in the mind.
Copied from general description. Cited as adapted from Nancy Spector, "Mario Merz, Tasmania," n.d., in Education files. Removing the citation from being public-facing as I'm not sure Nancy Spector was ever at DMA. CLC 8/17/18.
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS (list applicable note links)
AUDIO ASSETS
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
265933129:UMO. [Caption] Mario Merz. Source: Gorup de Besanez, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 18, 2016. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
WEB RESOURCES
- Fondazione Merz~Learn more about Mario Merz, his life and his works.
- NEON on Vimeo~Watch a video about the life of Mario Merz (with English subtitles).
- Internet Archive~Read the catalogue from the the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1989 Mario Merz retrospective.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES (digitized/non-digitized)
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
apply to constituents where id equals 2782
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 2782
Category
rules_operator
AND
General Description
Mario Merz was born in Milan, Italy in 1925. He studied medicine in Turin, where, during World War II, he became involved with the Italian anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà. He was imprisoned in 1945 for his antifascist activities, and began drawing while in jail. He began as a painter in Turin in the 1950s, influenced by Art Informel. Around 1963, Merz departed from traditional understandings of painting, piercing canvases and incorporating everyday objects such as bottles and umbrellas in his works. By the late 1960s he was involved with arte povera, a term coined by art critic Germano Celant to describe artists working in diverse, experimental ways to explore the intersections of art and life, and of nature and culture, incorporating humble materials in order to protest the inhumanities of industrialization and consumer culture. In 1969 and 1970, Merz began making particular reference to the Fibonacci sequence, which is the underlying mathematical structure of forms such as the shell of a snail and the cultural architectural structure of the igloo. The Fibonacci sequence became a recurring preoccupation in the artist's work. From the 1970s onward, Merz's work became more strongly conceptual, often taking the form of site-specific installation. He died in Turin, Italy, in 2003.
Adapted from
- Allan Schwartzman, "From a Prehistoric Wind," in Fast forward: contemporary collections for the Dallas Museum of Art, eds. María de Corral and John R. Lane (Dallas Museum of Art ; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 158-165.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
(digitized/non-digitized)
Web Resources
- Fondazione Merz~Learn more about Mario Merz, his life and his works.
- NEON on Vimeo~Watch a video about the life of Mario Merz (with English subtitles).
- Internet Archive~Read the catalogue from the the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum 1989 Mario Merz retrospective.
Notes
He grew up in Turin and attended medical school for two years at the Università degli Studi di Torino. During World War II he joined the anti-fascist group Giustizia e Libertà and was arrested in 1945 and confined to jail, where he drew incessantly on whatever material he could find. In 1950, he began to paint with oil on canvas. His first solo exhibition, held at Galleria La Bussola, Turin, in 1954, included paintings whose organic imagery Merz considered representative of ecological systems. Bu 1966, he began to pierce canvases and objects, such as bottles, umbrellas, and raincoats, with neon tubes, altering th materials by symbolically infusing them with energy.
In 1967, he embarked on an association with several artists, including Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Gilberto Zorio, which became a loosely defined art movement labeled Arte Povera by critic and curator Germano Celant. This movement was marked by an anti-elitist aesthetic, incorporating humble materials drawn from everyday life and the roganic world in protest of the dehumanizing nature of industrialization and consumer capitalism.
In 1968, Merz adopted one of his signature motifs, the igloo. It was constructed with a metal skeleton and covered with fragments of clay, wax, mud, glass, burlap, and bundles of branches, and often political or literary phrases in neon tubing. He participated in significant international exhibitions of Conceptual, Process, and Minimalist Art, such as Arte povera + azioni povera at Arsenali dell'Antica Repubblica, Amalfi, and Live in Your Head: When Attitude Becomes Form at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1968; the latter exhibition traveled to Krefeld, Germany, and to London. In 1970, Merz began to utilize the Fibonacci formula of mathematical progression within his works, transmitting the concept visually through the use of the numerals and the figure of a spiral. By the time of his first exhibition in the United States at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in 1972, he had also added stacked newspapers, archetypal animals, and motorcycles to his iconography, to be joined later by the table, symbolic as a locus of the human need for fulfillment and interaction. Merz often responded to the specific environments of his exhibitions by incorporating materials indigenous to the area as well as adjusting the scale of the work to the site.
Mario Merz envisioned the contemporary artists as a nomad, shifting from one environment to another and resisting stylistic uniformity while mediating between nature and culture. From 1968 Merz used the hemispherical form of the igloo—a transitory dwelling—to express his faith in the liberating powers of restlessness with the world and its values. He assembled the rounded structures with segmented, metal armatures, usually covering them with a net and bits of clay, wax, mud, burlap, leather, glass fragments, or bundles of twigs. Phrases making political or literary references, spelled out in neon, often span the domes. The earliest such example, Giap Igloo (1968), bears a slogan attributed to the North Vietnamese military strategist General Vo Nguyen Giap: "If the enemy masses his forces, he loses ground; if he scatters, he loses strength." The contradiction inherent in this phrase captures Merz's conception of the igloo as a momentary shelter that, despite its perpetual relocation, remains a constant.
Merz often used materials indigenous to the sites of his exhibitions to reinforce the nomadic essence of the igloo and its references to a humble economic system close to nature. For a 1979 show in Australia, for instance, he used eucalyptus leaves to blanket an igloo. He also adjusted the structure's scale and intricacy of design—igloos have been pierced by curving tables, surrounded by stacks of newspapers, or clustered in groups—to correspond to the environment in which they are exhibited. Unreal City, created for the Guggenheim Museum's spiraling rotunda on the occasion of the artist's 1989 retrospective, is a tripartite igloo: the large, glass-covered structure is transparent and reveals smaller wood and rubber version nestled within. As in all of Merz's sculptures (and much arte povera work in general), this piece embodies both beauty and violence: the shards of broken glass clamped onto this fragmented edifice are at once delicate and dangerous. The neon phrase "Città irreale" (Italian for "unreal city"), suspended across a wire-mesh triangle on the dome, refers to the intensely subjective, surreal quality of Merz's art. Although the nomadic artist may shift from one location or style or medium to another, creating momentary theaters of meaning, the sites visited are, ultimately and essentially, places in the mind.
Copied from general description. Cited as adapted from Nancy Spector, "Mario Merz, Tasmania," n.d., in Education files. Removing the citation from being public-facing as I'm not sure Nancy Spector was ever at DMA. CLC 8/17/18.
rules
Apply To
Constituents
id
Equals
2782
source file
artists_and_designers-0099.xml.nores