Michelangelo Pistoletto

Blenheim Art Foundation’s third exhibition spans Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto’s prolific fifty-year career, featuring painting, sculpture, and new, site-specific installations. The show also introduces visitors to the themes underpinning his work across the decades. Classical Antiquity collides with post-war consumerism in Venus of the Rags, an iconic piece from the Arte Povera movement of 1960s-70s Italy which exemplifies Pistoletto’s anti-establishment use of cheap and unconventional materials to make high art. The exhibition also showcases a spectacular collection of over thirty of Pistoletto’s celebrated Mirror Paintings. The Palace itself plays muse for a new work called Mirragio: a gold-painted car – inspired by the golden balls perched atop of the building – submerged by the water of the Palace fountains.

As well as celebrating the breadth of Pistoletto’s materials and techniques, the show also introduces Pistoletto the political philosopher. His striking Mappamondo, a globe made of burnished newspaper, was remade for Blenheim Palace using material from British journalism. The breathtaking Third Paradise symbol, wrapped in Pistoletto’s signature rags, hovers above the Great Hall, calling for a more harmonious, unified future.

For more information, visit: https://blenheimartfoundation.org.uk/