Artist’s Shit

Piero Manzoni was an Italian artist whose provocative conceptual practice challenged the materiality and commodification of art itself. Working across painting, sculpture, and performance in the 1950s and early 1960s, he created objects and gestures that questioned what art could be, from monochrome canvases to editions of canned goods and his own bodily waste presented as commodity. His work anticipated institutional critique and dematerialization movements that would define late-twentieth-century practice. Manzoni died in 1963 at age thirty, leaving a brief but radical body of work that continues to influence contemporary artists engaging with the politics of authorship and value.

Soncino, Italy