Lugano
Michelangelo Olivero Pistoletto was born on June 25, 1933, in Biella to two artist parents. His father, also named Michelangelo Pistoletto, was a restorer and painter, particularly of frescoes. A year after his son’s birth, he opened a studio in Turin, where the family relocated. At the age of fourteen, Pistoletto began working with his father, learning techniques rooted in the Western artistic tradition. When he was eighteen, his mother enrolled him in the advertising school run by Armando Testa. Two years later, in search of independence, he opened his own advertising studio. For several years, Pistoletto continued to work both with his father and in the world of advertising—two contrasting realms, the past and the present, which would later merge in his artistic production.
In 1955, he debuted with his first painting, exhibited at the Circolo degli Artisti in Turin: a self-portrait from head to bust. Pistoletto focused heavily on self-portraiture during his early creative phase. A distinctive feature of these early works was the attempt to fill the entire surface of the piece with the figure, aiming to eliminate the surrounding space and evoke a sense of emptiness. Starting in 1958, he began creating life-sized, full-body self-portraits. The backgrounds behind the subjects were black, gold, silver, or decoratively abstract, with no reference to reality. That same year, he ended his collaboration with his father and began working with his first gallery: Galatea in Turin, where he also held his first solo show in 1960.
It was during the creation of Il Presente in 1961 that Pistoletto found the solution to his ongoing exploration of backgrounds: the mirror. “When in 1961,” he would later recall, “on a black background polished to a mirror finish, I began painting my face, I saw it come toward me, emerging into the space of a room where everything moved, and I was shocked.” In 1962, after various experiments, he began using polished stainless steel surfaces for the first time, while the figures were created with tissue paper, on which he traced life-sized photographic reproductions. Thus, the mirror paintings were born. Early examples include Self-Portrait (1962) and Seated Man (1962). More importantly, his work now embraced a fourth dimension—the integration of time. These pieces coexisted with the past, present, and future: the depicted figure representing a specific historical moment (the past), and the mirror reflecting an ever-changing present. The viewer would see themselves within the artwork, immersed in their own time and space.
In April 1963, Pistoletto exhibited the mirror paintings for the first time during his second solo exhibition at Galatea. At the same time, disillusioned with the gallery scene he had known, he traveled to Paris in search of something—or someone. That someone turned out to be Ileana Sonnabend. The gallerist was so captivated by his work that she purchased all the pieces from the Galatea show, marking the beginning of a long-term collaboration. On March 4, 1964, Pistoletto held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. That same year, he created the Plexiglass series, exhibited at Galleria Sperone in Turin.
A highly active period began for Pistoletto, both in Italy and internationally. During the 1960s, several European and American galleries hosted his solo shows. Among the most notable were exhibitions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1966), the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (1967), the Kornblee Gallery in New York (1967, 1969), and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1969).
A landmark year was 1967, when Pistoletto created his iconic Venus of the Rags—another fusion of opposites—alongside Minus Objects (1964), works that aligned him with the emerging Arte Povera movement. He was among the artists featured in the 1968 Arte Povera exhibition at Galleria De Foscherari in Bologna. The Venus of the Rags became one of the most emblematic works of Arte Povera, and Pistoletto one of its key figures and forerunners. 1967 was also the year of his early performances, including Walking Sculpture, and the formation of the Zoo group—“those behind the bars”—an informal collective born out of a series of shared artistic actions, composed of artists from various disciplines. With Zoo, performances and gatherings were held across Europe in all kinds of public spaces: streets, squares, bars, clubs, galleries, and theaters. That year, Pistoletto won first prize at the São Paulo Biennial and the Belgian Art Critics Award.
In the 1970s, he engaged in various exhibition projects. In June 1973, at Galleria Sperone, he combined his art with that of his father, who, to echo his son’s work, painted images of metallic objects. Two years later, in 1975, he began the series Le Stanze (“The Rooms”), twelve exhibitions held throughout the year at Galleria Christian Stein in Turin.
In 1978, he exhibited in three venues in Berlin: at the Nationalgalerie—where he created installations among the museum’s permanent collection—at Galerie Schweinebraden, and in thirteen public spaces across the city (Pistoletto in Berlin). That same year, he held another key exhibition at Galleria Giorgio Persano: Art Takes on Religion – Division and Multiplication of the Mirror. In these final years of the decade, he was also active in the U.S., where he presented solo exhibitions and coordinated Creative Collaboration in Atlanta—a series of public art events involving artists from different fields.
The 1980s marked a return to sculpture, a passion he had nurtured since youth. He explored this through works in rigid polyurethane. In November 1981, he exhibited the sculpture group The Nativity at Galleria Salvatore Ala in New York. From 1984, he also began using concrete, sometimes combining it with polyurethane, as in The Four Seasons (1985).
In 1991, Pistoletto purchased an old wool mill in his hometown of Biella. Seven years later, this became Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto. The foundation carries out the mission of Progetto Arte, an organization he founded in 1994 to promote the social role of art through exhibitions, conferences, and educational workshops. Throughout the 1990s, Pistoletto also taught sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
In 2003, the same year he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale, he introduced both the manifesto and the symbol of the Third Paradise—a conceptual union and harmonization of the First and Second Paradises. The First Paradise represents a time of symbiosis between humans and nature; the Second, the era of science and technology. Pistoletto presented the Third Paradise as his new project during the ceremony in which he received an honorary degree in Political Science from the University of Turin. With this initiative, he began working on environmental sustainability, collaborating with various organizations.
Key events and honors in the 2010s include his solo exhibition at the Louvre in Paris (Année 1 – Le Paradis sur Terre, 2013), the Praemium Imperiale awarded in Tokyo (2013), the installation of the Third Paradise symbol in the atrium of the European Union Council in Brussels (2014), and the 2015 installation of Rebirth in the park of the Palace of Nations in Geneva (UN headquarters). Finally, he received two more honorary degrees: from the Universidad de las Artes in Havana (2015) and from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (2016).
