While at Magazzino Italian Art Foundation, Francesco Guzzetti conducted important research on Arte Povera, which enhanced the Foundation’s educational efforts. As Scholar-in-Residence, Guzzetti led tours of the exhibition, Arte Povera: From the Olnick Spanu Collection; organized, presented, and participated in public programs such as the lecture series Reconsidering Arte Povera which took place in the spring of 2019 at Magazzino Italian Art; and contributed new research on objects in the collection. Guzzetti also worked with the newly opened Research Center to bolster its library holdings and advised on key archival and research materials to acquire.
As a resident scholar, Guzzetti further developed his doctoral dissertation he defended at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2016, as well as in the research he conducted as the Lauro De Bosis postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. His doctoral thesis addresses the late period of Arte Povera following the publication of Germano Celant’s definitive book "Art Povera" in 1969, and the connection between the movement and international Post-minimalist and Conceptual Art in the early 1970s. Guzzetti retraces the international network in which Italian art was included by reconstructing landmark group exhibitions and publications as well as focus on the work of each particular artist who adhered to Arte Povera, comparing their work to that of relevant foreign artists.
About Francesco Guzzetti
Francesco Guzzetti holds a doctoral degree in History of Modern and Contemporary Art from the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Most recently, Guzzetti was the Lauro De Bosis postdoctoral fellow at the department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University in 2018. He was also the postdoctoral researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore in 2017 and was a visiting scholar at CUNY Graduate Center and research fellow at the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York in 2014-2015.
His dissertation dealt with the work of the Arte Povera artists within the international network of Post-Minimalist and Conceptual Art in the early 1970s. Building on his doctoral thesis, Guzzetti is currently working on a publication about major issues of visual culture in Italian art in the 1970s.
Guzzetti has participated in major international conferences and published several essays addressing numerous subjects in art history and the history of collecting and criticism, spanning from the late 19th century to Postwar and early Postmodernist Art.