Signed; Michelangelo Pistoletto - Ritratti al Tavolo del Terzo Paradiso - 2015

Michelangelo Pistoletto. Portraits at the Table of the Third Paradise. Siena, Carlo Cambi Editore, 2015. For Galleria Mucciaccia. Dimensions 29 x 29 cm. Illustrated hardcover. 125 pages, (9) with numerous full-page color illustrations. Texts by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Achille Bonito Oliva. On the first page, a large signed autograph dedication by Pistoletto accompanied by an original drawing. Original edition.
In excellent condition. Some marks on the white part at the back of the cover.
Attention: There may be problems with shipments to the USA.

Biography
Only child of Livia Fila (1896-1971) and painter Ettore Olivero Pistoletto (1898-1981), who had created a series of paintings on the history of wool art for Zegna of Biella. A year after his birth, the family moved to Turin, where his father had opened a restoration studio. From a young age, he attended his father's studio, opposed to modern art trends, where he learned the basics of drawing and painting, as well as the latest restoration techniques; he also engaged with the art world through Sunday visits to the Galleria Sabauda in Turin.

He started in 1947 as an apprentice in his father's workshop, a painting restorer, with whom he collaborated until 1958: it was here that he came into contact with Western painting tradition, medieval art, and Renaissance art.

In 1953, he collaborated with Armando Testa, founder of the first advertising school in Italy. He directed this advertising institute until 1958. Advertising influenced his early research. Even during these years, he began his creative activity in painting, which also expressed itself through numerous self-portraits, on canvases prepared with metallic priming and later on mirror-polished steel surfaces.

Visiting Turin's exhibition venues, such as Luciano Pistoi's Galleria Notizie, Galleria La Bussola, the International Center for Aesthetic Research, and the Civic Museum, where critic Luigi Carluccio curated a series of exhibitions focused on the comparison between Italy and France, featuring artists like Georges Mathieu and Hans Hartung, along with his engagement with Lucio Fontana's works seen in Turin at the 'Art in the Window' exhibition, leads him to reflect on contemporary art, on the contrast between abstract and figurative.

He exhibited his first work, a self-portrait, in 1955 at the Circolo degli Artisti di Torino.

The beginnings

Door, Tate Liverpool
Between 1962 and 1966, the subjects of the 'mirror paintings' were cut out and immobilized in a snapshot, in an atmosphere of suspension that was even more heightened. In 1963, the year he exhibited for the second time at Galleria Galatea, he was mistakenly associated by Ileana Sonnabend with pop artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. However, in Pistoletto, there is always a lack of identification between art and consumer objects and commodities, which is present in American Pop Art, as well as the removal of the artist's hand, typical of Warhol, for example.

In 1964, the shift from mirror panels to Plexiglas occurred, which are sheets of transparent resin on which the artist paints or reproduces photographs of objects already used in earlier works, allowing glimpses of the surface they rest on. Light encounters the emptiness of the work and the fullness of reality, of the environment. The distinction between image and reality becomes ambiguous; the depicted objects transform into real objects that relate to the passage of time and the changing nature of things.

The works I do [...] are objects through which I free myself from something — they are not constructions but liberations — I do not consider them additional objects but fewer objects, in the sense that they carry with them a perceptual experience permanently externalized.
(Carlos Basualdo, Testi by Michelangelo Pistoletto, in Michelangelo Pistoletto. From One to Many. 1956-1974, Electa, 2011, p. 344.)

Arte Povera
With fewer objects and the first works made with rags, such as Venere degli stracci (1967), it will become a catalyst for the birth of Arte Povera.

In 1967, he self-published a theoretical reflection on the evolution of his work, titled 'Le ultime parole famose.' He questions the ambiguity in art between 'a mental and abstract part and a concrete and physical part,' between a literal presence of the artist in the mirror and an intellectual presence in painting.

The seventies and eighties

Shipwreck, an artwork from 1984 in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli.
Within the spaces of the Christian Stein Gallery in Turin, from October 1975 to September 1976, Pistoletto carried out 12 consecutive exhibitions, one each month. The Rooms, which originate from three environments (three rooms connected by three doors aligned on the same axis), act as a kind of architectural telescope, reflecting one into the other within the same space.

Between 1979 and 1980, Pistoletto created an extensive creative collaboration involving several cities in the United States, with a series of solo exhibitions and installations in museums, galleries, and public spaces. Pistoletto worked on a busy schedule of collaborations with numerous local artists, musical groups, and theater companies. In Atlanta, he invited theater director and actor Lionello Gennero, jazz musician Enrico Rava, and American composer Morton Feldmann, assisted by Maria Pioppi.

The Creative Collaboration continues in various cities during the two-year period: New York, Los Angeles, and Athens. Simultaneously, it is also happening in Italy, in Bologna and Corniglia, where Pistoletto coordinates and participates in a series of street performances alongside those artists who had collaborated with him in Atlanta.

At the Galleria Persano in Turin, in June 1985, a group of works was exhibited consisting of volumes and surfaces, using large blocks of polyurethane used for sculptures, covered with canvas and painted with dark, gloomy colors. The artist, in the text published in the catalog, also refers to these works with the expression 'art of squalor.' In photographic reproduction, Pistoletto presents, on large wooden panels, images of some of these works exhibited in various places in previous years to highlight the union of painting and sculpture through the two-dimensionality of photography.

The nineties

Segno Arte in Bregenz
It concerns a production of a series of works created by the artist and an invitation for others to create their own 'Segno Arte' as well. The exhibition was held in France in 1993, simultaneously in several cities including Rochechouart, Thiers, and Vassiviere.

The Arte Sign of Pistoletto is a figure formed by the intersection of two triangles, ideally inscribing a human figure with raised arms and legs apart. This shape is used by Pistoletto as a basic module for creating other works in different materials. An example of the Arte Signs produced by others is 'L'ala di Krems,' a permanent sculpture made in Krems in 1997, composed of luminous panels each containing the Arte Sign of a Krems inhabitant.

Usually, a sign has been traditionally imposed for everyone—a religious sign, a political sign, an advertising sign, the sign of a product. Signs invade the world, but only the artist has created the personal sign. Now it is time for others to also be self-responsible. Each person, having their own sign, holds the key to entering the door of art—a door that leads both to the reserved, intimate, personal space and to the space of social encounters.
Progetto Arte is based on the idea that art is the most sensitive and comprehensive expression of thought, and it is time for the artist to take responsibility for communicating every other human activity, from economics to politics, from science to religion, from education to behavior— in short, all the issues of the social fabric.
Pistoletto develops an innovative program to break down the traditional barriers between different artistic disciplines. The project's goals are to involve, in addition to artists from various fields, also political figures. The ideas, outlined in the manifesto, are summarized and realized in the exhibition in Pistoia (from November 1995 to February 1996) at Palazzo Fabroni, divided into 16 thematic rooms corresponding to the different issues addressed within the Project: Philosophy, Architecture, Politics, Literature, Economy, Food, Market, Religion, Design, Science, Art, Information, Music, Meetings, Clothing, and Theater.

Subsequently, from September 1996 to February 1997, at the Museo Pecci in Prato, he curated the exhibition Habitus, Abito, Abitare, in which the rooms are frequented by artists, designers, sociologists. Additionally, various initiatives are organized throughout the city aimed at engaging the public.


The former Trombetta wool mill in 2012.
In 1998, Pistoletto founded 'Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto' in Biella, a center dedicated to contemporary art where exhibitions, conferences, performances, educational and multimedia workshops are organized, aiming to put art in interaction with society. The idea of purchasing, renovating, and requalifying what was the 19th-century Trombetta wool mill in Biella into a creative and expressive laboratory is characteristic of the artist himself. The large space of the former factory hosts areas related to art, politics, education, production, work, ecology, economy, architecture, communication, fashion, and nourishment. Each year, through the UNIDEE project, the foundation has proposed new artists, who are tasked with working on projects based on the binomial art and society. The Cittadellarte headquarters also houses Pistoletto's permanent collection.

The 2000s: The Third Paradise, Omnitheism, and Demopraxy
In 2003, the artist wrote the manifesto of the Terzo Paradiso, drawing a symbol composed of two contiguous circles at the ends of a larger central circle: it is a reinterpretation of the mathematical sign of infinity.


The Third Paradise in the forest of San Francesco in Assisi
At the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, the Third Paradise was presented as an event aimed at engaging adults and children in a respect for nature and urban spaces through creative involvement based on the interaction between art and society. A collective manifestation that seeks to encourage social responsibility with a reflection on environmental sustainability. Events and exhibitions, besides being organized in various Italian cities, are also held abroad. It was showcased in the exhibition titled The Inner Island: The Art of Survival, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, during which events and meetings were organized on the island of San Servolo with the participation of Gilberto Gil, a musician and Minister of Culture of Brazil.

Since 2007, with the collaboration between Pistoletto and Gianna Nannini, the Third Paradise has taken the form of a multimedia 'work in progress'. In 2010, Pistoletto wrote the essay The Third Paradise, published by Marsilio.

After 2011, in the Bosco di San Francesco in Assisi, acquired by the Italian National Trust, a visitor route was created that begins at the Basilica and ends in a clearing in the Tescio valley, where a model of the Third Paradise has been built. In April 2017, at Ponte San Ludovico in Ventimiglia near the Italy-France border, construction began on a large stone reproduction of the symbol. A depiction of the Third Paradise was reproduced by iSKO for the 2017 Home Festival, above the former Customs building in Treviso. Also in 2017, the Italian Space Agency incorporated the glyph into the logo of the 'Vita' mission (NASA/ASI ISS-3) for the International Space Station, with astronaut Paolo Nespoli. In 2018, the Third Paradise was adopted by the Municipality of Fontecchio, which placed a representation of it in the former San Francesco convent. In 2019, it was traced in the city of L'Aquila, on the pavement of the Castello Park.

Pistoletto addresses the themes of spirituality, monotheistic religions, and politics in his 2017 manifesto Ominiteismo and Demopraxia. Ominiteismo challenges both individuals and religious institutions to face themselves for a judgment that does not come from above but directly confronts each person and all collectively with their responsibilities. Responsibility thus becomes the practice that governs and unites all parts of society. Demopraxia — a concept and term devised in 2012 by Paolo Naldini, director of Cittadellarte — replaces the term 'power,' from the Greek Κράτος (krátos, from which democracy derives), with the term 'practice,' from the Greek πρᾶξις (pràxis, from which demopraxia is derived), to reach with demo-practice where the imposition of demo-power could not go. The aim remains to stimulate social responsibility through art.

In 2020, with the granting of an exclusive license, the symbol was donated by Pistoletto to the Municipality of Biella, which had become a UNESCO Creative City the previous year; consequently, the symbol is present in specific sites in the Biella area, such as Ricetto di Candelo.

On February 21, 2025, Pistoletto was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize of the same year by the non-profit organization Gorbachev Foundation.