Samples of ecological art
From Italy. In India and elsewhere….

DR. Martina Corgnati

Atendency among the Italian cultural heritage specialists, art historians and curators, is such to consider landscape and, more extensively, nature as a part of the cultural heritage we want and we are appointed to preserve. Indeed a polluted or variously abused territory cannot convey cultural heritage properly.

This is why I decided to focus on the commitment that a significant part of contemporary Italian art (or contemporary art in general) leans towards nature and ecological issues.

My article concerns some contributions by Italian artists and institutions to the matter, starting with some already classical examples by the generation of “Poveristi”, whose conceptual approach was deeply inscribed in the artistic culture of the Sixties, and coming to more recent experiences such as those of the duo Andrea Caretto & Raffaella Spagna, who worked, among other places, several times in India, taking part to a residence program at Khoj International Art Association in Delhi, 2012.


How did contemporary art start to develop an interest towards a scientific, economic and social subject such as ecology and the conservation of the environment, landscape, the planet?

Personal involvement, social and environmental responsibility, care for nature, newly discovered as interlocutor and partner of the artistic intervention are all parts of a attitude which probably started in the Sixties and later with a different range of experiences such as ‘walking art’ in UK (Hamish Fulton), Germany (7000 Oaks by Joseph Beuys) and ‘Arte Povera’ in Italy.

Among the artists belonging to this group, founded by Germano Celant in 1967, whose social commitments could not been more explicit, Giuseppe Penone started working systematically with natural materials, especially trees and plants, dead or even alive.

My article concerns some contributions by Italian artists and institutions to the matter, starting with some already classical examples by the generation of “Poveristi”, whose conceptual approach was deeply inscribed in the artistic culture of the Sixties, and coming to more recent experiences such as those of the duo Andrea Caretto & Raffaella Spagna, who worked, among other places, several times in India, taking part to a residence program at Khoj International Art Association in Delhi, 2012.