Michelangelo Pistoletto has for six decades forged a career that defies categorization. In his work across mediums, he mobilizes and explores the dynamics between self and community, space and duration, and reality and representation. He first presented his foundational Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings) in 1963 at Turin’s Galleria Galatea; these paintings include the viewer and their surroundings in the pictorial space of the work, melding the definite and the infinite. The series brought Pistoletto international recognition and led to his inclusion in major exhibitions of Pop art and Nouveau Réalisme. In the mid 1960s, he responded to the socio-political turmoil in Italy by harnessing quotidian and ephemeral materials in his sculpture series Gli oggetti in meno (The Minus Objects, 1965–66), which is considered integral to the emergence of Arte Povera. Pistoletto founded the interdisciplinary theater troupe Lo Zoo (The Zoo) in 1968, bringing performance art into the streets. In the ’90s, he placed social change at the heart of his practice. His most recent artistic phase, Terzo Paradiso (Third Paradise), is dedicated to encouraging artifice—science, technology, art, culture, and politics—to reinvest in nature.

Pistoletto’s work has been the subject of numerous retrospectives, including those at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (1976); Palacio de Cristal, Madrid (1983); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (1990); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2000); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2010); and Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England (2016). He has participated in thirteen installments of the Venice Biennale and in four presentations of Documenta, Kassel. Pistoletto’s painting and sculpture resides in numerous international public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Tate, London; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Pistoletto was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale (2003), and in 2013, he received the Praemium Imperiale for Painting from the Japan Art Association. Pistoletto was born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, where he lives and works today.