Art historian, curator, curator, art director and editor-in-chief, Germano Celant will have marked a turning point in the history of contemporary art.

Swept away by the Covid-19 on April 28, 2020, at the age of 80, he leaves behind him writings and major exhibitions. In particular, the Arte Povera artistic movement, a term he created in 1967 to designate a community of avant-garde artists. The latter questioned the symbolic function of art by giving a whole new meaning to materials.

His work was strongly influenced in Genoa in northern Italy when he was confronted with the struggles between communist workers and neo-fascists. Highly inspired by the leftist movements, these Italian artists of the 1960s challenged the cultural industry and more particularly the consumer society. Following the guerrilla model, this movement went against the abstract painting that was mostly in vogue in the 1950s.

In other words, the process consists of rendering meaningless objects meaningful. This nomadic art wishes to make itself inaccessible by condemning both the identity and the object.
Germano Celant's exhibition "Arte Povera - Im Soazio", in 1963, perfectly illustrates this trend. In a period of workers' activism and economic instability, artists worked with recycled materials and everyday objects in order to fight against pop culture and American minimalism.

In addition to being appreciated by its public, it was also adored by influential figures in the art world.

Curator Bice Curiger saw it as "A great intellectual force, a scion of the enormously rich artistic and cultural life of the 1960s in Italy, an important companion and protagonist of the internationalization of local European scenes. »

Artist Christo says, "He was always very fond of our work. Germano wrote some of the most influential pages in the history of contemporary art, and the art world will miss him. I already miss him."

Or Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada, the presidents of the Prada Foundation, state that "Germano Celant was one of the central figures in the learning and research process that art has represented for us since the early times of the foundation. The many experiences and intense exchanges we shared with him over the years have helped us rethink the meaning of culture in our present. ».

Germano Celant has had an exemplary career, inspiring an entire generation. Politically committed, he will remain an indispensable symbol of Italian art.