Giovanni Anselmo

About

Konrad Fischer first exhibited Giovanni Anselmo in 1968 in the group exhibition Prospect '68 at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, then as a solo presentation in 1974 at the Galleria Sperone Fischer, a collaboration with the Turin gallery owner Gian Enzo Sperone. Since then Giovanni Anselmo has been closely associated with the gallery, along with other artists of Arte Povera, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz and Giuseppe Penone. The term "Arte Povera," introduced by Germano Celant in 1967, describes an art movement that has radically renewed art since the mid-1960s in its departure from traditional forms of sculpture and painting and a turn toward new poor and natural materials.

Giovanni Anselmo's artistic work combines both a physical and poetic approach to nature, as in our exhibition through the use of granite blocks and a compass needle: materials and objects that Anselmo uses as carriers of meaning to visualize invisible energies such as gravity, gravitation and, by extension, the work's determination and location within the earth's magnetic field.

The artist hangs granite blocks weighing up to 400kg as high as possible in the room, with the knowledge of the physical law that a body that moves away from the center of the earth loses weight, i.e. becomes a little lighter. The self-closing running knot of the steel cable refers to gravity. At the same time, Anselmo sees the granite itself as a painting medium. Instead of conventional paints, which are lightened by adding white, the color of the stones changes, figuratively speaking, the higher they hang, seeming lighter, brighter.  The magnetic needle pointing north both testifies to the power of the earthly magnetic field and suggests an alignment of the work in harmony with the space surrounding it.