The exhibition The Preventive Peace by Michelangelo Pistoletto provides an insightful journey through the illustrious career of Italy’s most prominent artist spanning over sixty years, who stands as one of the most influential contemporary figures in European art today.
This expansive showcase aims to present the artist’s entire oeuvre, including Pistoletto’s seminal works: Mirror Paintings, Venus of the Rags, Minus Objects, Love Difference – Artistic Movement for an Inter-Mediterranean Policy, The Third Paradise, alongside numerous sculptures, installations, photographs, videos, and early public space interventions. The exhibition also features his latest paintings resembling colorful QR codes, which not only offer visual enjoyment as abstract art but can also be activated through smartphones, revealing interesting stories or offering answers to contemporary social issues generated through artificial intelligence.
As a leading figure of Italian Arte Povera, Michelangelo Pistoletto (born in Biella in 1933) has, since joining the art scene in the 1960s, intertwined his artistic practice with society and its evolution. He champions the beauty of contrast and the appreciation for diversity while continually teaching us how to look beyond the material world of things. The activation of art through socially engaged practices represents the core of Pistoletto’s artistic endeavors together with its integration into everyday life as a tool for responsible social transformation. Visitors are invited on an aesthetic and contemplative journey where numerous existential and social questions are juxtaposed: the real and the virtual, the material and the spiritual, the weight and lightness of ordinary objects, their beauty and ugliness. Each contrast aims to suggest the deeper meaning of things, breathing life into the realm of the new and the possible.
The first solo exhibition by Michelangelo Pistoletto in Belgrade was organized in collaboration with the Cittadellarte – Pistoletto Foundation, the Zerynthia association, and the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrade, with the patronage of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the Italian Embassy in Belgrade.
The exhibition is curated by Marijana Kolarić, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Assistant curator of the exhibition is Kristina Armuš.
Photos: Bojana Janjić, Alessandro Lacirasella
The Preventive Peace