Piero ManzoniActor from M HKA Ensembles

Piero Manzoni

©image: PhotoNews

1933 - 1963

Born in Milano ().

[Piero Manzoni](http://www.pieromanzoni.org) (1933–1963, Italy) was a precocious painter and writer of manifestos, notably Per una pittura organica (‘Towards Organic Painting’) in 1957. Inspired by Klein and Fontana, Manzoni produces his first achrome (colourless painting) in 1957, underlining the purity of the material. From around 1960, when he exhibited with the Zero Group, his work focuses on the intellectual rather than the material. Manzoni produces certificates of authenticity declaring a person an authentic artwork, the artist’s breath caught in a balloon and his most legendary work, Merda d’artista (‘Artist’s Shit’): small metal cans containing 30 grams of his own excrement.

Works

>Piero Manzoni, Untitled (Achrome), 1957.Painting, folded burlap soaked in kaolin, 73 x 60 cm.

>Piero Manzoni, Tavole di accertamento, 1958-1960.Print, ink, paper, 8 x (572 x 472 mm).

>Piero Manzoni, Alberto Burri, Jean Tinguely, Jef Verheyen, Yves Klein, Werner Ruhnau, Letter from Yves Klein to Jef Verheyen (17 January 1959), 1959.Letter, ink on paper, 29,6 x 21 cm / 2 sides, with envelope.

>Jef Verheyen, Piero Manzoni, Frank Philippi, Jef Verheyen and Piero Manzoni (right) in a restaurant in Milan, 1959.Photography, photograph (leica).

>Piero Manzoni, Linea, 1959.Drawing, ink, paper, 333 x 234 mm.

>Piero Manzoni, Corpo d'aria [Body of Air], 1959-1960.Object, metal, plastic, rubber, whip, paper, 5 x 42.7 x 12.3 cm, 1.5 x 1.5 x 20 cm, 41.5 x 11 cm.

>Piero Manzoni, Linea, 1961.Drawing, smoke drawing on paper, 41,5 x 58,5 cm.

>Jef Verheyen, Hermann Goepfert, Serge Largot, Nanda Vigo, Raymond Dauphin, Rochus Kowallek, Lucio Fontana, Gotthard Graubner, Jan van der Borgt, Maria Mara, Paul Ibou, Jos Macken, Frank-Ivo van Damme, Piet Sterckx, Christian Megert, Galerie Edith Wahlandt, Dominique Stroobant, Guy Stern, Lotte Lenya, Leon In den Kleef, Madeleine Everaert, Marlborough Gallery, Hergé, Roger Nellens, Hugues C. Pernath, The Antwerp Gallery , Albert Szukalski, Anselm Thürwächter, Galerie Bernard, Ivo Michiels, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, Guy Vaes, Vic Gentils, Adam Seide, Günther Uecker, Piero Manzoni, Jef Verheyen's Liber Amicis, 1962-1984.Other, mixed media on bound paper.