Art Povera by CELANT, Germano, editor

Many illus. in black & white. 240 pp. Small 4to (228 x 209 mm.), semi-stiff pictorial wrappers (extremities a trifle worn). New York: Praeger, 1969. First edition (an edition was published in Britain simultaneously) of this important anthology presenting the works of 35 American and European artists, accompanied by their artists' statements; stapled to page 204 is an autograph postcard from Andre, dated 23 July 1976, in which he mentions a "terrible fight" with Donald Judd. Celant (b. 1940), the influential art critic and curator, coined "Arte Povera" in 1967 and frequently discussed this movement as well as artists' books in his writings. This was his first work to be published outside of Italy. "The fact that Art Povera was presented simultaneously in various countries and multiple languages gave the publication a transnational character...Celant's was a deliberate and well-orchestrated effort to go beyond the unequal Italy-United States power relationship. It was not presented as an Italian book translated into English but as a cultural product that claimed no nationality of origins..."-Sharon Hecker & Marin Sullivan eds., Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying the Knot, p. 279. This catalogue depicts the projects and exhibitions of artists such as Walter De Maria, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stephan Kaltenbach, Richard Long, Mario Merz, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Beuys, Eva Hess, Michael Helzer, Ger van Elk, Lawrence Weiner, Luciano Fabro, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Kosuth, Jan Dibbetts, Robert Barry, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Dennis Oppenheim, Barry Flanagan, Robert Smithson, Alighiero Boetti, Hans Haacke, Gilberto Zorio, Robert Morris, Marinus Boezem, Carl Andre, Richard Serra, etc. Very good copy with a most interesting postcard from Andre. A number of annotations throughout, presumably by Keith Johnson, the addressee of the postcard.