… “My beginnings date to the years between 1961 and 1963, when I was deeply affected by the ‘germinal’ painting of American artists such as Rauschenberg, Johns, and Dine. Their work resonated with the poetry of Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg, with Cage’s music and Cunningham’s dance. There was a palpable sense of oxygen and vitality in the air—an atmosphere free from the constraints that burdened art in Italy at the time, where figures such as Burri, Fontana, and Manzoni were working in near-total isolation, and in Europe more broadly, where only the Nouveaux Réalistes managed to break away from the dominant chorus.”

Subsequently came his involvement with Arte Povera, promoted by Germano Celant. What did the “poor” quality of his work mean at that time?

“Around 1968, Celant invited me to join what was referred to as Arte Povera—a loose constellation of artists from Turin, as well as from Genoa and Rome. It was not a group in the strict sense, but rather a convergence around shared impulses and attitudes. Chief among these was the desire to rediscover the primary meaning and sensuality of materials, beyond ossified commonplaces and beyond the codified procedures of making that had come to dominate artistic practice. Materials—whether natural or artificial—were not used for what they represented, but understood as living matter, and therefore as the sculptor’s raw material.

The first defining aspect of Arte Povera was almost Franciscan in nature: an ethic of humility, of bending down toward matter and listening to its voice. A second aspect lies in the mode of engagement with history. Unlike American Minimalism, which operated through an avant-garde logic of negation, rejecting previous research, Arte Povera sought instead to renew past languages without denying them—without ideological superstructures—interacting with tradition in a form of innovative coexistence.” …

Camilla Bertoni (L’Arena newspaper) interviews Pierpaolo Calzolari, 2002