30 March - 6 May 2012

Curated by Andrea Bellini.

Castello di Rivoli. Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli (To)

Castello di Rivoli dedicates to Piero Gilardi an exhibition focused on the first twenty-two years of activity of the artist from Turin, from the first "nature-carpets", works that brought him considerable international success in the sixties, up to a wide series of documents that illustrate his decision to leave the art system and devote himself first to a "creative" voluntary activity within a psychiatric hospital and then to political and social militancy. As an irregular figure on the Italian art scene, Gilardi first touches the Pop themes with nature rugs, then actively participates in the birth of the Arte Povera movement, without ever identifying himself with a specific artistic group. The radical refusal to consider the work of art as a consumer good led him - at the turn of the seventies - to abandon any object production, for involving himself directly in social activities. Like few other artists, Piero Gilardi is driven by the absolute belief that art can change people's lives and that it must participate in the transformation of society, thus improving the environment in which we live.