Marisa Merz Centenary Retrospective Across Three Turin Museums

Three Italian museums are mounting a joint retrospective for Marisa Merz, the only woman in the Arte Povera movement, to mark the centenary of her birth. Titled "Marisa Merz – The Dance of the Hours," the exhibition spans the Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (GAM) in Turin, the Fondazione Merz, and the Castello di Rivoli. Each venue will emphasize different aspects of her practice. GAM's show, curated by Chiara Bertola and Chiara Parisi, focuses on the intersection of art and life in her home-studio. The Fondazione Merz, led by her daughter Beatrice Merz and Sébastien Delot, highlights process and transformation. At Castello di Rivoli, curators Francesco Manacorda and Marianna Vecellio center on her installation "E il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare" (1980), exploring metaphysical space and featuring contemporary artists Miriam Cahn and Micol Assaël. The retrospective includes never-before-seen works and pieces from her 2017 U.S. debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Merz began her "Living Sculptures" in 1966 and showed them at Gian Enzo Sperone Gallery in 1967. She worked with aluminum, fabric, wax, and paint until her death in 2019. A single catalog will be released at a conference, date TBD.