Piero Gilardi: Artist, Activist, and Pioneer Remembered by Andrea Bellini

Andrea Bellini pays tribute to Piero Gilardi (1943–2023), a visionary Italian artist and activist of Swiss origin. Born in Turin in 1943 to a father from Lugano, Gilardi held Swiss citizenship due to fascist laws. In the 1960s, he traveled to the US, sending reports on the American art scene to Flash Art, and was among the first to discover Richard Long in London. In 1969, he helped organize two landmark exhibitions: Op Losses Schroeven at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle Bern. He found commercial success with his polyurethane 'nature carpets' (1965), shown by Ileana Sonnabend, but rejected the art world's frivolity. At the end of the 1960s, he withdrew from the official art scene to work with radical leftist collectives in Turin, focusing on anti-psychiatric and workers' rights activism. In the 1980s, he engaged with Native American communities and environmentalism, pioneering New Media Art. His vision led to the PAV (Parco Arte Vivente) in Turin, founded in 2008, an interactive open-air museum and research center blending art, nature, and biotechnology. Bellini recalls Gilardi's prescient activism on political and environmental issues, now highly relevant.