Marisa Merz's expressive yet tranquil drawings reveal a deeply personal world teeming with intricate mazes of figures and signs. Her gestures subtly inhabit distinct spaces, as the delicately drawn portraits seem to emerge from a smoky, sumptuous field. Though these portraits maintain an air of intimacy, the underlying themes associated with the Arte Povera movement nevertheless continue to inform her work.
Read MoreThe Italian movement, which formed in 1967 and counts Merz and her late husband Mario Merz as founding members, called into question established ideas and assumptions about the processes and materials that had come to define Western art. Though the name has no literal translation, it can be roughly interpreted as 'impoverished art,' and Merz, along with the other innovative, seminal artists associated with Arte Povera, began using everyday and organic materials in an effort to subvert the elite status that the art object had attained in its role in the consumerism-based culture of advanced capitalism.
Marisa Merz was born in 1926 in Turin, Italy. She received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at insitutions including: Centre Internationale d'art et du Paysage, ÎIe de Vassivière, France; Serpentine Gallery, London; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, Naples, Italy; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Merz has also been included in group exhibitions at notable institutions including: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein; CCS Bard/Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. In 2017, Merz will be the subject of a solo exhibition co-organized by the Hammer Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and will travel to both museums.
Text courtesy Gladstone Gallery.
