Remembering Piero Gilardi

Magazzino Italian Art Foundation is saddened by the loss of our dear friend and groundbreaking artist, Piero Gilardi (1942–2023), who passed away this Sunday, March 5, 2023. Gilardi has left a tremendous legacy that will continue to resonate throughout the international art community. “Art is life,” was very much the motto of Gilardi’s life, as he dedicated himself to being an artist, activist, and opening a discussion about ecology, incorporating all facets of his life and art into one.

We are honored to have had the opportunity to host the first institutional exhibition of Gilardi’s work in the U.S. which featured a selection of his important Tappeti-Natura, curated by Elena Re, on view at Magazzino Italian Art from May 7, 2022 through January 9, 2023. The artist’s original and inventive use of synthetic materials like polyurethane foam led him to develop his Tappeti-Natura, which he is best known for and which he began working on in 1965. This body of work represents for Gilardi, an ideal uncontaminated nature, recreated with artificial materials, which the artist shaped through the intaglio technique and saturated with synthetic pigment. Originally these works were intended to be interacted with, creating a multisensory experience for the viewer and blurring the lines between art and life.

The exhibition, Gilardi: Tappeto-Natura, was intended to fulfill the artist’s lifelong dream of reuniting these Nature-Carpets under one roof, allowing them, as he put it, to “expand and distort themselves following an incomprehensible yet acceptable organic rhythm.” The show marked an important moment of growth for Magazzino and we are proud to have had the chance to work with an artist whose values and vision so profoundly align with those of our institution. Gilardi was the first artist to generously donate artworks to the permanent collection of Magazzino Italian Art Foundation for which we are incredibly grateful.

Between 1966 and 1968 Gilardi lived in New York, immersed within a community of postwar Italian and avant-garde artists, and exhibiting internationally both in galleries and underground spaces. Gilardi was instrumental in placing Arte Povera in relation to postminimalist and conceptual tendencies and coined the term “microemotive art.”

In 2002 Gilardi also conceived PAV—Parco Arte Vivente, an open-air experimental center for contemporary art in Turin, Italy which was built in 2008. PAV is noteworthy as a direct reflection of Gilardi’s philosophy, which emphasized freedom and art as inextricable from life.

Piero Gilardi’s work is undeniably poetic yet profoundly postmodern and plays a fundamental role in conversations about ecology and art that are all the more pertinent today. His legacy as an artist and friend will never be forgotten and we feel honored to have had the opportunity to work with him on one of his final projects. His work spoke beyond the limits of time and to know Piero was to be in the presence of pure creativity, warmth, and love; a love for art, others, and most importantly life.

Ciao Piero.