Marisa Merz

Marisa Merz's has her debut in 1966, when she displays copper foil sculptures in her Turin studio. The exhibits include mobile, irregular spiral structures in which the rigour of minimalism contrasts with a metamorphous, enigmatic, ethereal image. The design of this installation, which is made up of several elements communicating with one another, is closely linked to the characteristics of the exhibition venue, and the following year the artist proposes it again at two different venues: the Gian Enzo Sperone gallery and the Piper Club in Turin. Based on an interest in the quality of materials and essential design, this first work paves the way for the artist’s official participation in the Arte povera movement. In 1968, during the collective exhibition Arte Povera + Azioni Povere curated by Germano Celant at the Arsenali dell’Antica Repubblica di Amalfi, Merz exhibits rolled-up blankets packaged using copper wire or adhesive tape (Untitled, 1966) and works related to her daughter Beatrice’s childhood made of nylon thread, copper or wool. Among these are Little shoes (Scarpette) (1966) and Bea (1968), which consist of the letters making up the little girl’s name, knitted and pinned to the wall or overturned and messed up by the waves on the foreshore.
The artist introduces in the language of contemporary sculpture techniques which are traditionally considered to belong to handicraft or to be typically female work. In doing so, however, she identifies a brand-new destination for them, giving the various procedures and materials she uses full artistic dignity. Another work dedicated to her daughter is The swing for Bea (L’Altalena per Bea) (1968), which is a large horizontal wooden triangle which is hung to the ceiling by means of long straps, capable of ‘conquering’ the space if animated by an external drive. Produced as well in a rectangular version and re-proposed in the collective exhibition Op Losse Schröven Situaties en Cryptostructuren at Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, this installation is at the same time a work of art and a real object, marking the complete merging of art and life in the artist’s poetic. Drawing on Picasso’s assemblages [1881–1973] and on Alexander Calder’s [1898–1976] mobile, the work brings the idea of play and pleasure into sculpture and further marks the distance existing between the artist and the primary, rational and self-referential structures of minimalism. As compared to the group of Arte povera, however, since the very beginning Merz shows an eccentric sensitivity, which relates her with women artists like Eva Hesse [1936-1970] or some representatives of Fluxus and conceptual art like Hanne Darboven [1941]. The time component, that appears already in her knitted work, becomes essential in her following installations, where Merz collects, combines and re-defines her previous works. This is what happens in Tables (Tavole) – two rectangular tables on which she has placed the rolled-up blankets of 1966 and a desk full of objects collected by the artist over time – a work that is presented at the L’Attico gallery in Rome in 1969 for the first time and is later displayed at Bologna’s Museo Civico in 1970 during the III International Biennial of Young Painting. In 1972 at the XXXVI Venice Biennial the artist presents With one’s eyes shut, the eyes are extraordinarily open (Ad occhi chiusi gli occhi sono straordinariamente aperti) (1975) which brings together the sculptures in copper wire, the Bowl of Salt (Scodella del Sale) of 1967, Bea and Little Shoes of 1968. Used again and again to put together new discourses, these works are closely interconnected, they create a field of forces marked by the presence of different time conceptions: one, objective, of the present, and the other, affective, of voluntary memory (when it includes elements of the artist’s private existence) and involuntary memory (when it shows archetypes related to the feminine world). Following her participation in the collective exhibition Ricerca estetica dal 1960-1970 in 1973, held at Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni during the X National Art Quadriennial, Merz’s works take on a fully environmental inspiration in the series of “rooms” the artist sets up in complementary spaces: on the one hand the gallery, which is open and public, and on the other the cellar (1977), which is instead private and subterranean, or her studio (1979). The artist transforms these spaces into a big mosaic of which she is the central figure. This constant shift from the personal to the public sphere, following an oscillation of forms and works that each time find their own new dimension for display, is one of the main keys to the reading of Merz’s work and is fundamental to understand her decision made in the early 1980s never to hold any personal exhibitions again. Since then, the artist has only displayed her works during important collective exhibitions like the XXXIX Venice Biennial of 1980 where she is invited by Herald Szeemann to take part in the exhibition L’arte degli anni settanta; Identité italienne. L'art en Italie depuis 1959 curated by Germano Celant at the Centre Pompidou of Paris (1981); Avanguardia. Transavanguardia curated by Achille Bonito Oliva at Rome’s Palazzo delle Esposizioni (1982). At Documenta 7 in Kassel in 1972 Merz sets up a small room parallel to Meret Oppenheim, thus inaugurating a dialogical mode of exhibiting that she will adopt several times in the following years. At the same time her research focuses mainly on drawings made using graphite on canvas or pastels and wax on cardboard with an italic, synthetic style; sometimes she turns to sculpture in raw clay. With the latter technique the artist moulds small heads and figures that may remind of Medardo Rosso’s impressionistic faces and that she often covers with gold leaf or a layer of colour and places next to fragments of materials or objects, as shown in the installation presented at the XLIII Venice Biennial in 1988. The 1980s are characterised by drawings with repeated lines, which often reveal stylised women’s faces. Seen sometimes as self-portraits and more often as anonymous hieratic, vaguely archaic figures, these images are often associated to poor everyday objects which belong to life rather than art. Six of these pencil-on-canvas drawings appear, together with a harp and a wall composition of copper wire, in the installation entitled The harp (L’arpa) (1974-75) presented at the exhibition Bilderstreit, Widerspruch, Einheit und fragment in der kunst seit 1960, Messehallen of Koln. Following the red thread of an art made of little things, of secret shapes and whispered messages, at Documenta 9 in Kassel (1992) the artist presents a small square fountain in wax – a discrete, though vital presence for the murmur of the water. The early 1990s instead are marked by the habit of setting up her works by simply placing them on pieces of wood or metal shelves, thus creating a strong contrast between geometric shapes and the indefinite shape of the drawing, between the solidity of the support and the precariousness of the installation. The individual exhibitions organised by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1994-1995, together with the special award obtained at the XLIX Venice Biennial in 2001 confirm the artist's international reputation. In the following years Merz keeps presenting her works in the framework of new settings-installations tailored to the exhibition venue, as during the exhibition Artempo in the beautiful setting of Palazzo Fortuny in Venice in 2007 or, more recently, at the exhibition organised by the Rivoli Castle in Turin in 2008, entitled Una stanza tutta per sè which, drawing inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s A room of one’s own, explores the issue of loneliness and its importance in the creative process while reflecting on the concept of ‘artist’s atelier’ and ‘monographic room’.