This work by a Protean artist of the so-called Arte Povera movement is just what it purports to be – a pile of newspapers in a basin, with “materia” (dirt) layered on top, where one of the papers was also slashed with a knife, the artist’s ink signature appearing on the edge. Arte Povera itself, meaning “poor art” or “impoverished art” in Italian, was a radical art movement that emerged in Italy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It challenged the established art world by using unconventional, often “poor” or discarded, materials like dirt, rags, and twigs, to create art. The movement aimed to critique consumerism, industrialization, and the commercialization of art by emphasizing the raw, ephemeral, and conceptual nature of the artistic process and materials. Formerly owned by the gallerist Martha Jackson, this work was included in a show at the Guggenheim Museum – Bilbao surveying Tapies’ sculptural/object-driven works. It was likewise included in a traveling exhibition of her personal collection originated by the (then-named) Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo
