Publications

curated by Luca Bochicchio and Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo

Essays by Luca Bochicchio, Letizia Bonizzoni, Marco Gargano, Flaminio Gualdoni, Francesco Guzzatti, Choghakate Kazarian, Federico Leoni, Nicola Ludwig, Jaleh Mansoor, Luisa Mensi, Monica Molteni, Arianna Novaga, Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo, Giada Pellicari, Raffaella Perna, Domenico Quaranta, Marco Senaldi, Irene Stucchi, Matteo Torre, Giorgio Zanchetti

This is the first comprehensive scholarly book on Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit), one of the most provocative and misunderstood works of contemporary art. Often compared to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), Manzoni’s work has been both scandalous and influential, marking a turning point in ‘60s conceptualism. The book presents the latest research on Merda d’artista, revealing its hidden meanings and stories, all verified. Drawing from multiple disciplines, including Art History, Philosophy, Sociology, Chemistry, and Economics, the book compiles papers from an international conference held in Verona, Italy, in March 2023. Organized by the Piero Manzoni Foundation and the University of Verona, this work summarizes years of research on this iconic work, part of which available on the website merdadartista.org. It is designed to introduce an international audience to the profound impact and significance of this controversial work by Manzoni.

Pages: 412
Year of publication: 2025
ISBN 9781036417468
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Language: English

by Giuliano Sergio

Giuliano Sergio’s essay analyses the visionary coherence with which Piero Manzoni, one of the 20th century’s most famous artists, intuited the fundamental role that the mass-media played in defining artistic languages and the figure of the artist in the Fifties. In the late 50s, the romantic icon of the artist-genius, represented by Jackson Pollock, was asserted through the photographic and cinematographic story of his gestures, suggesting a model of fusion between art and life that became a veritable critical interpretation of the work.
From the rejection of Action Painting, of the “useless gestures” of Pollock and his followers, Manzoni created his complex image, constructed in a diametrically opposite way. His “gesture” took the form of observing the unfolding of the work with secular irony: the unfolding of the Line, the swelling of the Body of air, the extension of the achrome-surface. The actions that Manzoni performed for newsreels – Sfere di gomma (Rubber Spheres), Le “lunghe linee” (The “Long Lines”), Sculture da mangiare (Edible Sculptures), Sculture viventi (Living Sculptures) – were filmed as cabaret scenes; the artist resorted to advertising photography to promote his Artist’s Shit. He created paradoxical reportages where he signed naked models and marked hard-boiled eggs with his own thumb print. These were images produced to be published in illustrated magazines or projected during the intervals at the cinema. Manzoni addressed the general public to sow doubt about the role of the artist and the function of art. At the dawn of consumerism, Manzoni’s genius shifted the attention from the “product” to the artist, giving a precise indication to the Italian avant-garde and initiating an important lesson with respect to the concept of behaviour and identity that would become one of the nodes of Arte Povera and Process Art.

Pages: 128
Year of publication: 2024
ISBN 9788892823655
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi
Language: Italian

curated by Paolo Campiglio, with an essay by Irene Stucchi

It is the summer of 1958 when Piero Manzoni, during a long trip to the Netherlands, meets Hans Sonnenberg in Rotterdam, a well-known collector of avant-garde art. The meeting must have been particularly fruitful, as already in September of the same year, at the Rotterdamsche Kunstkring, Manzoni’s first Achromes are exhibited in a solo show organized by his friend Gust Romijn, with the support of Sonnenberg. This marks the beginning of a relationship of mutual respect and friendship between Piero and the Dutch patron, which will prove to be very fruitful over time. Mutual respect and friendship are demonstrated by the content of the extensive correspondence exchanged between them. The volume, edited by Paolo Campiglio, compiles documentation that includes the complete correspondence archived at the Piero Manzoni Foundation and reveals the behind-the-scenes aspects of key moments in the artist’s development in relation to the Dutch context. As is well known, Manzoni would later join the Dutch section of the Zero group – of which Sonnenberg would be the driving force – and exhibit with the members of the Nul group.

Pages: 176
Year of publication: 2022
ISBN 8884169941
Publisher: Abscondita
Language: Italian

Essays by Luca Bochicchio, Flaminio Gualdoni, Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo, Marco Senaldi

This book, published by Carlo Cambi Editore and produced in collaboration with the Piero Manzoni Foundation, wants to pay homage to Piero Manzoni’s work Artist’s Shit on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its creation.
It contains four essays, translated into the four languages present on the label of the legendary can, which explore this iconic artwork not only from a philosophical, historical and artistic point of view, but also want to outline the strongly pop and symbolic aspect that has decreed and continues to decree its critical fortune over the years, assigning it an undisputed role in the elite of the “must known” of the contemporary art world.

Pages: 160
Year of publication: 2021
ISBN 9788864033600
Publisher: Carlo Cambi Editore
Language: Italian - German - French - English

curated by Gaspare Luigi Marcone, with an essay by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

The book features 25 texts by Piero Manzoni, spanning from 1956 to 1963, the year of the artist’s premature death. Selected by art historian Gaspare Luigi Marcone, all writings have been either translated into English for the first time or newly translated. Each text is accompanied by extensive archival images and contextualized with editorial commentary. Furthermore, the volume includes a foreword by the director of the Piero Manzoni Foundation, Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo, and a specially commissioned essay by the renowned art historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (Harvard University).

Pages: 268
Year of publication: 2019
ISBN 9783906915333
Publisher: Hauser & Wirth
Language: English

by Flaminio Gualdoni

This book is a biography of the celebrated Italian artist Piero Manzoni. It first appeared in Italian in 2013, published by Johan & Levi Editore. The publication traces the guiding themes of Manzoni’s iconic, experimental body of work through the lens of his rapid and diverse creative development, as well as the artistic partnerships he formed within the Italian and European avant-gardes.
Gualdoni states: “Manzoni was a figure of profound intellectual formulations and fulminating intuitions, who understood from the start that original artistic practice could only take place against the backdrop of cosmopolitan European culture, and he decided to contribute to that culture in a lucid and decisive manner.”

Pages: 300
Year of publication: 2019
ISBN 9780847849130
Publisher: Gagosian
Language: English

Essays by Paolo Campiglio, Jack McGrath, Davide Colombo, Michele Dantini, Gaspare Luigi Marcone, Luisa Mensi, Fuyumi Namioka, Raffaella Perna, Francesca Pola, Emilio Risso, Barbara Satre, Stefano Setti, Francesco Tedeschi, Giorgio Zanchetti

There comes a time in the critical history of an artist when their figure is freed from the tired game of claims to greatness, from slogan-like definitions tailored to a specific cultural framework, and from noisy trivializations of contemporary relevance. It is the time for in-depth studies, sharp investigations, and thorough reconstructions, when the immediacy of the present fades, making way for the broader perspective of history. This is precisely what is happening now, more than 50 years after his death, with Piero Manzoni. The Foundation, in fact, has become a key interlocutor for  universities, museums, and public institutions, defining its mission as a genuine promoter of knowledge—an approach that, in today’s climate, truly makes it both an exception and a model. The study day organized bears none of the characteristics of the academic-social events that plague the cultural world, nor of the parades of fame-seeking nobodies that one too often has to witness. Rather, it is a precise moment in which knowledge comes into being, marking the beginning of another crucial phase, one of reflection and dialogue. Due to this peculiarity, it was deemed necessary to collect in a volume the contributions resulting from this meeting.

Pages: 264
Year of publication: 2017
ISBN 9788864032634
Publisher: Carlo Cambi Editore
Language: Italian

by Raffaella Perna

The book documents and reconstructs the relationship between Manzoni and Rome, outlining the network of connections the Milanese artist forged with critics, gallery owners, and Roman artists, while also offering a fresh interpretation of the insights that the so-called artists of Piazza del Popolo found in their encounter with Manzoni.
Manzoni’s first contacts with Rome date back to 1955, when, at just 22 years old, he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at La Sapienza University. Between 1959 and 1961, Manzoni would exhibit in Rome four times, first connecting with the Galleria Appia Antica and the cultural and artistic milieu of Emilio Villa, then with the Galleria Trastevere, led by Topazia Alliata, and later with the Galleria La Tartaruga, directed by Plinio De Martiis. In Rome, which at the time was experiencing a particularly fertile artistic season, Piero Manzoni’s influence manifested in two distinct phases. At the end of the 1950s, it was the achromatic and anti-expressive aspect of Manzoni’s work that piqued the interest of young Roman artists, particularly Franco Angeli, Mario Schifano, Giuseppe Uncini, and Tano Festa. A few years after Manzoni’s death, Roman artists’ attention shifted to the performative aspects of his work.
By the mid-1960s, Manzoni’s work had already become an important source of inspiration for Roman art. This was significantly aided by the close relationship the artist maintained with the capital throughout his brief life, beginning with his first stay there. Eight years after Manzoni’s passing, on February 6, 1963, from a heart attack, the exhibition at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, curated by Germano Celant, marked the definitive recognition of his work. From that moment, Manzoni’s research entered the canon of 20th-century Italian art as one of the most significant and original contributions to post-war art.

Pages: 272
Year of publication: 2017
ISBN 9788891814883
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi
Language: Italian

curated by Gaspare Luigi Marcone

Piero Manzoni’s interest in writing dates back to his early years. A key figure in 20th-century art, in his youth he was undecided whether to devote himself to painting or writing. Theoretical texts, manifestos, articles, programmatic writings, and tools—both for understanding his ideas and for making them known—sometimes published and translated into various foreign languages during his lifetime, testifying to the evolution of Manzoni’s choices and reflections. Emblems of his “total being”,  of an artist with an international vocation who, in just a few years, conceived and created Achromes, Linee (Lines), Sculture viventi (Living Sculptures), Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit), Socle du monde, and many other radical works—syntheses of poetry and irony, a taste for the paradox, and conceptual rigour. Writing, imbued with a philosophical substratum, would become a fundamental part of his dazzling artistic journey. This volume brings together both the writings on art published during his lifetime (from 1956 to 1963) and a substantial corpus of drafts, typewritten manuscripts, and notes, some of which are transcribed and published here for the first time.

Pages: 143
Year of publication: 2016
ISBN 9788884165664
Publisher: Abscondita
Language: Italian

by Guido Andrea Pautasso

This book analyzes the works of Manzoni associated with Food Art, moving in every possible direction and without preclusions of any sort. It highlights the unique nature of his experimental research, rooted in the creation and formulation of an avant-garde language of expression and capable of broadening the horizon of perception of the spectator in every sphere and on every sensorial level. Milan, Thursday 21 July, 1960: Piero Manzoni welcomes his guests to his exhibition-event in the Azimut gallery, Consumazione dell’arte Dinamica del pubblico Divorare l’arte (Consumption of Art Dynamic of the Public Devour Art), consisting of 150 hard-boiled eggs on a table, on which he has placed a thumbprint. They are works of art, sculptures ready to be eaten in exactly 70 minutes; and his audience, without any hesitation, devours them all, one by one, under the artist’s vigilant eye.
Between the end of 1950 and the beginning of the 1960s, avant-garde art was undergoing radical change on an international scale: painting and sculpture in the academic sense were suddenly thrown into question, traditional-style exhibitions were being replaced by events, or happenings which placed the spectator in the center of the scene, becoming the fulcrum around which the artist’s action unfolded. Having deprived the easel of its traditional role by using non-paint media (like plaster and kaolin, which he used extensively in his Achrome series), to cancel it and thus overcome the concepts of figurative and abstract art, Manzoni focused his research entirely on human behavior, with the aim of creating a direct rapport between a work and its spectator. With his Consumazione dell’arte (Consumption of Art), a performance laden with symbolic meaning and regarded as somewhat scandalous, through the consumption of eggs, he was aiming to sanctify the rapport created between the artist, his creations and the public. At the same time, he embarked on a critical attack of the art institutions of the time, which he saw and felt were at the service of the incipient consumer society.

Pages: 352 
Year of publication: 2015
ISBN 9788891803597
Publisher: Electa
Language: Italian | pesci rossi

by Flaminio Gualdoni

Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit), a coveted object for museums and collectors alike, is one of the defining icons of avant-garde art and among its most enduring myths. Since its creation in 1961, the work has been shrouded in legend—its content, the artist’s intent, and the dramatic escalation of its market value all fuelling the myth surrounding it. It has become the subject of legends and, inevitably, of irony, parody, controversy, and fierce rejection—placing it in an ideal lineage with the ultimate scandalous artwork of the century, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. This account traces the genesis of Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit) within Manzoni’s creative journey and the growth of its eccentric historical fortune up to the present day, which has elevated it to an enduring symbol of contemporary culture.

Pages: 40
Year of publication: 2014
ISBN 9788857223377
Publisher: Skira
Language: Italian

by Elena Manzoni

Dear Piero, I’ve been wanting to write to you for a long time, ever since you started visiting me in my dreams after your death. It was always the same dream: I was on the balcony, the large one in the dining room on Via Cernaia. It was the dead of night, and at the far end of the street, I could hear your dry cough, identical to our father’s. I would then rush downstairs and chase after the sound of your cough as if it were a magic flute, until I reached you in Brera, in the alley that now bears your name, next to the Giamaica bar. “I came to look for you at this hour,” you would say, “because I know you’re a night owl, and I have to hide, no one must know that I’m alive. But tell Mum: I’m not dead. I only pretended to die, because for an artist, glory begins after death.” A memory of Piero Manzoni, one of the most brilliant artists of the late twentieth century, written by his younger sister. The volume was published on the occasion of the exhibition Piero Manzoni 1933 - 1963 held in Milan in 2014.

Pages: 45
Year of publication: 2014
ISBN 9788857224053
Publisher: Skira
Language: Italian

by Francesca Pola

The complexity and variety of relations shaping the new artistic network that spread all over Europe between the late ‘50s and the early ’60s is accounted for this book. A movement, internationally known as ZERO whose backbone and catalyst was the multifaceted Piero Manzoni.
Manzoni is the forerunner and inexhausted “travelling messenger” of this new geography of relations. His continuous journeys and activity mark an authentic European style. A new artistic conception due to reform art’s future worldwide. A new transnational vision is established, by all means an alternative vision compared to North American art, but also dissimilar to the Parisian milieu. ZERO operates according to a new geography: it travels through Milan, Rome, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Düsseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Anvers, Copenhagen and Zagabria. Following different lines and standards and producing a massive epistolary exchange, this group of artists establish new creative and at the same time methodical guidelines, as well as new figures and new places that inexorably adopt such guidelines, thus amplifying and spreading their effects.
Retracing Manzoni’s European artistic activity as well as his closest authors has been possible thanks to an accurate research on bibliographies, documentaries and evidences. Moreover, strictly related to this movement, the book explains a series of important international partnerships between Italy and Europe brought to light through unpublished documents (vintage pictures, original letters, etc.) which form a further contribution on Manzoni’s work and twentieth century art.

Italian edition
Pages: 304
Year of publication: 2014
ISBN  9788837099893
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi

English edition - the book includes the video documentary Piero Manzoni and ZERO, realized by Zenit Arti Audiovisive (52’, English, Italian and German versions)
Pages: 152
Year of publication: 2018
ISBN  9788891819345
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi

by Francesca Pola

In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the little Ligurian town of Albisola, famous for its ceramics production, became a crossroads and a catalyst for international encounters and experiments in the contemporary art scenario. From childhood, Piero Manzoni spent a long time here each summer with his family, and soon discovered that it was a stimulating, inspiring place. After a detailed study of books, documents and personal testimonials about the artist, not only did it prove possible to reconstruct the time spent by Manzoni in Albisola and the exhibitions he held there in their historical context but, more particularly, to document a series of important friendships from his time there, also unpublished documents (old photographs, letters, autographs, and so on) providing further insight into the artist’s work. Through exceptionally rich illustrations and excellent content, the book describes the complexity of the relationships and motivations which contributed decisively to the increasing creativeness of one of the leading figures in the art scene of the second half of the 20th century.

Pages: 150
Year of publication: 2013
ISBN 9788837097004
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi
Language: Italian

curated by Gaspare Luigi Marcone

Piero Manzoni began to write a diary in March 1954 and, apart from odd pauses and periods of silence, managed to keep it up for about 16 months, until the summer of 1955. The almost 300 hand-written pages, which are being published here in their original unedited format, reveal precious information about what he read (Ariosto, Hemingway, Proust and so on), the art exhibitions he visited, his first encounters in the art world, the many films he saw at the cinema and his numerous travels in Italy and Europe. Obviously there are also descriptions of everyday life and the ways young people used to entertain themselves.
One of the most interesting things to emerge from the manuscript is what he calls his ‘torment’: waverings, changes of mind and doubts about art, religion and politics. He also pondered about his future, oscillating constantly between optimism and pessimism, seriousness and irony. In fact, at that time, Manzoni was still undecided whether to devote himself entirely to painting or to become a writer. His first attempts at writing about themes connected with philosophy, existentialism and esthetics, some of which he was to refer to again later in his artistic career, are especially important. In fact, it was probably his interest in these subjects which, between the end of 1954 and January 1955, eventually persuaded him to abandon his law studies at the Sacro Cuore University in Milan to devote himself to the study of philosophy at La Sapienza University in Rome. A remarkable but ‘complex’ read, both because of the subjects tackled and the author’s handwriting, which verges on the illegible at times. It’s probably the first true ‘Manzoni workshop’.

Pages: 216
Year of publication: 2013
ISBN 9788837097806
Publisher: Electa | pesci rossi
Language: Italian

by Flaminio Gualdoni

6 February 1963: at the age of just 30 Piero Manzoni was found dead of a heart attack in his studio in via Fiori Chiari. From that moment on his reputation as a provocateur and wild child preceded him, with his most subversive work, Artist’s Shit, elevating him to cult status. But what actually came before and lay behind those 30 grams of pure artistic output? Flaminio Gualdoni sets out to explore exactly that in this biography that traces the guiding themes of Manzoni’s works, lending order to a jumble of hitherto fragmented materials and setting aside any apocryphal hypotheses.
Milan’s “dolce vita” nightlife and the artist’s youthful bike expeditions; the early experiments under Fontana, in the search for a personal style, and the partnerships with young Italian contemporaries and international avant-garde movements which brought acclaim and recognition. This fast-moving career relegates Manzoni the private individual increasingly into the background, turning the spotlight purely on Manzoni the artist. What emerges powerfully, even in his continuous, incessant experimentation with all kinds of media – from painting to designs for immersive environments – is the compact kernel of an aesthetic adventure around the very essence of the work of art. And his life, in the dual sense of everyday existence and exceptional artistic undertaking, was necessarily an integral part of this tenaciously pursued adventure. In the words of the artist: “There is nothing to say; there is only to be, to live.”

Pages: 240
Year of publication: 2013
ISBN 9788860100986
Publisher: Johan & Levi
Language: Italian