Rotella Untitled 1972
Mimmo Rotella (b.1918)

Untitled, 1972  mixed media on forex, 84 x 112 cm

FROM FUTURISM TO ARTE POVERA Works from the Marcello Levi Collection

The exhibition of over fifty works by major protagonists of modern and contemporary Italian art  co-curated by Francesco Manacorda and Robert Lumley.

The works have been chosen from the Turin-based collection of Marcello Levi (b.1922) who, over the last sixty years, has been one of the leading collectors of contemporary art in Italy. He began collecting drawings and paintings by members of the Futurist movement, such as Giacomo Balla, Nicolay Diulgheroff and Gerardo Dottori, before becoming one of the earliest collectors of Arte Povera. He played a significant role in promoting the Deposito D'Arte Presente, an innovative exhibition space for young artists where Giuseppe Penone held his first ever show and where Michelangelo Pistoletto's 'Zoo' theatre group was active. His friendship with the artists enabled him to acquire a remarkable series of works that have rarely been shown in public.

Levi was collecting at the same time that Eric Estorick was building his own collection but, unlike Estorick, he tended to collect abstract rather than figurative art. The exhibition's selection, installation and display of key works will bring out both parallels and differences in their approaches to collecting, as well as serving to illuminate a particular slice of cultural life in Italy in the second half of the 20th century.

The earliest work in the show is a drawing by Giacomo Balla (1871-1958), entitled Rhythm, Noise and Speed of an Automobile. Dating from around 1913, it is a striking example of the artist's exploration of abstract solutions to conveying motion at this time, following his earlier, more analytical, studies of moving figures based on photographic sources. Balla's curving and jagged forms vividly evoke the visual and auditory sensations produced by a speeding car, an icon of Futurist art.

The main focus of the exhibition, however, is the Arte Povera movement that was founded in the second half of the 1960s and promoted by the Italian art critic Germano Celant. Arte Povera (literally 'poor art') is not a household name, unlike other art movements of the 1960s such as Pop or Minimal Art. However, it has recently become better known following the success of the 2001 touring exhibition Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera 1962-1972. Like Futurism, Arte Povera emerged at a time of dramatic socio-economic change, against a backdrop of political upheaval and technological expansion. Unlike the earlier movement, however, Arte Povera was internationalist in outlook and sceptical about industrialisation.

Although a European phenomenon, it developed principally in Italy, centred around Turin in the north, which at that time was a burgeoning industrial city. The name 'Arte Povera' referred to the choice of humble materials - such as earth, iron, wood and rags - with which the artists aimed to challenge conventional means of creative expression, reduce the artificial gap between art and life and react against the commercialism of the art market.

The exhibition includes two works by Michelangelo Pistoletto (b.1933), one of the key figures of Arte Povera. Blue Daniela (1962/72), is an example of his signature series of 'mirror paintings' in which images of figures are superimposed onto reflective steel plates, thereby enabling the viewer to become an integral part of an ever-changing picture. Another work, entitled Little Monument (1968), is characteristic of Pistoletto's use of brightly-coloured rags, which for Germano Celant represented 'the confusion and multivalence of marginalised people', celebrating the diversity of human experience and the disenfranchised elements of society.

Many of the artists associated with Arte Povera explored natural processes and incorporated organic elements into their works, but none more so than Giovanni Anselmo (b. 1934). Whilst walking on Mount Stromboli at dawn on 16 August 1965, Anselmo became aware of the invisible elemental forces that determine the workings of the natural world. The consistent aim of his subsequent installations and structures was to engage with and make manifest these mysterious forces, harnessing energy, tension, the pull of gravity and the power of magnetic fields.

Mario Merz (1925-2003) is perhaps the most famous name associated with Arte Povera and the exhibition includes two of his works. Snail and Spiral (c.1970), expresses Merz's interest in the Fibonacci sequence and its association with ideas of organic growth, as well as exemplifying Arte Povera's experimental approach to materials. Double Murano Bottle with Neon (1967) is an example of the increasingly complex installations that Merz was creating around this time, in which commonplace objects are exhibited in such a way as to imbue them with an undefined metaphysical significance.

Alighiero Boetti (1940-1994) drew on a similarly wide range of media, including embroidery, printing, photography and construction - an approach reflected in the untitled work on display in this exhibition which incorporates franked postal envelopes. Boetti's work frequently investigated the role of chance in artistic creation and embraced non-Western artistic traditions and disciplines, as in his famous series of embroidered maps of the world, created in collaboration with craftsmen in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Boetti disassociated himself from Arte Povera in the early 1970s, but remains a highly influential figure.

This adventurous approach to materials was shared by Mimmo Rotella (b.1918). After studying art in Naples, Rotella moved to Rome in 1945 and began experimenting with a number of different styles and techniques including photography, photomontage, assemblage and phonetic poetry. Rotella is best known for his works of 'decollage' - images created from layered posters torn from the walls of Rome that reveal the artist's Pop Art sensibilities in a similar way to the brash work in the current exhibition, dating from 1972.

Levi's collection of Italian art exists alongside works by such international giants of Modernism as Man Ray, Joseph Beuys and Andy Warhol, all of whom are represented in the exhibition. Also included is Paul Klee, whose beautiful Stained Glass Window of 1939-40 exemplifies his sensitivity to colour and intuitive approach to composition by 'taking a line for a walk'. Kurt Schwitters's White Carnival (1946) articulates his personal interpretation of the aesthetics of the Dada movement, which he baptised 'Merz'. His collages, constructed from discarded items such as bus tickets, magazine clippings, fragments of wood, fabric and other such 'debris', represent a highly innovative approach to materials which may be seen as anticipating that of Arte Povera itself.

From Futurism to Arte Povera: Works from the Marcello Levi Collection represents the Estorick Collection's most ambitious exhibition yet in terms of showcasing more contemporary Italian art, aiming to explore the legacy of the avant-garde pioneers whose works form the core of its own collection in these sophisticated and stimulating paintings, sculptures and installations.

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Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) White Carnival, 1946 collage and oil on card 28 x 23 cm