Giovanni Anselmo
Anselmo conceives the artist’s mission as “keeping open and alive” the “points of energy” that are “I, the world, things, life”. The artist sees his task as maintaining states of equilibrium in space and time.
Anselmo incorporates into his work natural materials (stone, wood, iron) which he combines with plant materials (sponge, lettuce, etc.), using their intrinsic natural qualities as much as their symbolic meaning. The artist, a member of the Italian art movement Arte Povera brought together by art critic Germano Celant in 1968, creates tension between combinations of antagonistic materials and masses. He reflects on the order of things, the cycles of nature and more generally the existential relationship between man and nature within the cosmos.
