Eliseo Mattiacci

Description

A fundamental instrument to extend and deepen our knowledge of a unique sculptor and to fit his works into the context of the artistic research of the twentieth century. A protagonist of contemporary art, ever since he was a boy, sculptor Eliseo Mattiacci, born in 1940, has been attracted by metals and by the spectacular process of welding, which prompted him to create plastic elements among his first works that seem to float in space like open and changing star systems. This monograph considers Mattiacci's historic adventure starting from the 1960s, when the artist was close to the international language of the Arte Povera and minimalism of Jannis Kounellis and Eva Hesse, arriving at the sculptures of the 1980s that were so light and sensitive that they could fit into any context, interacting with them. In the book Mattiacci's artistic path is interwoven with episodes in his life and the historical events of his time: the supporting structure of the work in fact consists of an illustrated chronology offering readers numerous testimonies of the age, comprising photographs, texts, invitations, books and poetic declarations.

Germano Celant was the senior curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York from 1989 to 2008. He has been a contributing editor at Artforum since 1977 and at Interview since 1991. Among his books are Anselm Kiefer: Salt of the Earth (Skira, 2012); Louise Bourgeois: The Fabric Works (Skira, 2011); and Piero Manzoni (Skira, 2009), among others.