Piero Manzoni

1959

Drawing, 333 x 234 mm.
Materials: ink, paper

Collection: Private Collection.

Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) is one of the great legends of post-WWII art, not in the least owing to his mastery of the weapon of provocation. The thoroughly unaesthetic oeuvre – from the *Achromes* (white canvases folded and saturated with porcelain clay) to the tinned artist’s excrement and the *Linea*, short or lengthy lines on paper – does away with the annoying and boring mystic discourse which so preoccupied art at that time. He is that happy hooligan who at the start of 1962 answers to G58 that he will gladly take part in their *Anti-peinture* exhibition: ‘For this occasion I would like to make something “moving”, more specifically a “moving shit”, but I don’t know if I still have time enough to finalize it.’ Fortunately he pulled it off, and Manzoni was represented in *Anti-peinture* with *peinture achrome*, *merda d’artista* and *ligne infinie*.