Piero Gilardi
Foam Rubber Revolution
Curated by Marco Scotini
Organised in collaboration with Fondazione Centro Studi Piero Gilardi and Galleria Giraldi
ChertLüdde, Berlin
7 September – 30 November 2024

During Berlin Art Week 2024, ChertLüdde presents Foam Rubber Revolution, a significant homage to Piero Gilardi that brings the work of this great artistic figure on view to an international audience. 

Curated by Marco Scotini and organized in collaboration with the Fondazione Centro Studi Piero Gilardi in Turin and Galleria Giraldi in Livorno, the exhibition features a selection of Gilardi’s iconic Tappeti-Natura (Nature Carpets) from the 1960s to the 2000s. Accompanied by archival material, the display reflects his ecological activism, political beliefs and commitment to social justice. The exhibition aims to capture the essence of Gilardi’s belief that art is a tool for social change. A centerpiece of the show is a large wallpaper portrait from 1979, depicting the artist wearing a mask from his series of political and industrial caricatures, created for the numerous street protests he participated in.

Piero Gilardi (1942-2023, Turin, Italy) was a renowned Italian artist and activist, celebrated for his innovative approach to art, particularly through his Tappeti-Natura. These soft sculptures, made from carved and hand-painted polyurethane foam, vividly imitate natural environments such as riverbanks, beaches, forests, caves, vegetable gardens and flowerbeds. He viewed these works as “an exorcism against the death of nature”, countering the environmental destruction of the Postwar era.

One of the featured works, Betulla nel torrente (Birch in the creek) (2005), references Gilardi’s first Nature Carpet created after the artist passed a polluted riverbed near his home. Feeling compelled to recreate and cleanse this landscape, this moment marked the beginning of his lifelong environmental consciousness, though his deep connection with nature began in childhood when his family fled to the countryside during World War II to escape the bombing and to find protection. Gilardi described that moment in these words:

“One cold winter morning, I took a walk along the banks of a river and was disturbed by the amount of urban waste left tangled in the bank vegetation or scattered among the smooth pebbles of the riverbed. I felt the urge to recreate that bleak landscape cleansed of the textures of pollution and came up with the idea of reconstructing it in the form of a household carpet with silhouettes carved in foam rubber to be able to offer comfort to the body. I later extended the iconography of the first Tappeto Natura riverbed to other natural elements by recreating grassy or rural areas with fruits, flowers and plant species caught in the circularity of the seasons, from germination to rotting. I placed these carpets in my apartment and the houses of my artist friends until one day a designer discovered them and wrote an article in the architecture magazine Domus. The designer was Ettore Sottsass, who identified their semiotic meaning as a right to exercise the death of nature, suffocated and poisoned by the increasing pollution of industrialist and capitalist society. Sottsass […] had grasped in my choice to use a synthetic material, produced by the new technologies of chemistry, the conceptual core of today’s ecological conception, which considers necessary the ‘restorative’ use of bio-technoscience for the restoration of altered ecological systems and biodiversity.”¹

Gilardi’s Nature Carpets were exhibited for the first time in 1966 during his second solo show at Sperone Gallery in Turin, a space that already established itself as a cultural bridge between American Pop Art and European movements, particularly Arte Povera. Gilardi himself contributed greatly to this important Italian movement, co-founding the Deposito Arte Presente (Present Art Depot) in Turin, a self-managed, non-commercial space for artists, critics and curators, an experience that gathered all the most significant voices of the Arte Povera. 

A year later, Gilardi gained international recognition with his Nature Carpets, exhibiting in galleries such as Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris, Zwirner in Cologne and Fischbach Gallery in New York, invited by art critic Lucy Lippard. However, he never intended for these works to be mere objects of observation. Creating costumes, beds, alcoves and foam playgrounds in addition to his carpets, Gilardi sought to accommodate the body as a way to foster connections with nature through interactions with his sculptures. He wanted people to respond to his art and ultimately, get inspired by it, integrating art into their daily life. “Art educates by conveying knowledge,” he once said, “but also emotions through empathetic communication.”²

After his exhibition at the Fischbach Gallery, Gilardi spent time in the United States, connecting with the East and West Coast art scenes and building relationships with other artists. Despite his success, he grew critical of the commercialization of art and eventually distanced himself from traditional art markets. He stopped creating his Nature Carpets for over a decade, focusing instead on supporting protest and militant groups fighting for social justice.

His strong political engagement can be seen in the exhibition in the large wallpaper documenting a street theater intervention he co-designed for the 1st of May protests in 1979. In this photo, we see the masked costume Agnelli-morte (Agnelli-death). Giovanni “Gianni” Agnelli (1921 – 2003) was an Italian industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat, Italy’s largest automobile industry. On Labor Day, his public intervention became part of the fight for improved labor conditions for Fiat’s employees. Commenting on Gilardi’s political interventions, the curator Andrea Bellini emphasizes the transformative role of materials in the artist’s practice: 

“Let’s just say that in this passage, foam rubber, the material Gilardi prefers to use, goes from being an instrument used to reinvent the habitat (thanks to the Nature Carpets and the Arte Abitabile exhibitions) to a means used to elaborate the habitus (via masks, theatrical animations, allegorical floats). What remains constant is the usability and polyvalence that this plastic output promotes, together with a hobby-like and do-it-yourself aesthetic, with a transformative and participatory potential inherent to the biomorphic and economically irrelevant features of the material per se.”³

Bellini highlights how Gilardi’s revolutionary use of polyurethane foam enhances the political charge of his work, emphasizing the power of art as an inclusive medium for change.

Along with the documentation of Gilardi’s 1979 Labor Day demonstration, two posters designed by the artist in 1969 offer further examples of Gilardi’s political commitment. The poster NO to Exploitation is a screen-printed wall manifesto for the workers group of Juvenilia, a small packaging factory in Turin, and NO to Repression is a poster dedicated to the student movement and denouncing the repression of the state police.

The exhibition also includes archival materials, such as exhibition invitations and letters exchanged with art critic Tommaso Trini, highlighting the extensive networks Gilardi helped to establish among artists in the late 1960s. During this period, Gilardi traveled extensively between New York, London, Düsseldorf, Paris, Amsterdam and Stockholm. He sought to understand the contemporary art scene, writing for several magazines. He believed that it was possible to create an alternative path to the traditional commercial channels, and embarked on curatorial activities, such as his contribution to the shows  When Attitudes Become Form at the Kunsthalle in Bern and Op Losse Schroeven at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the original catalog of which is on view in the show. 

An original copy of his artist’s book Dall’Arte alla Vita dalla Vita all’Arte (From Art to Life From Life to Art), published in the 1980s, is also on display. At that time, having distanced himself from the traditional art market, he was working as an art therapist in Turin earning a modest salary. With the support of his friend Michelangelo Pistoletto, he made an agreement with the Giorgio Persano Gallery to fund the printing of his book in exchange for an exhibition of his Tappeti-Natura, leading him to resume the production of his Nature Carpets to support specific projects and social causes.

Covering his political actions and many of his Nature Carpets, the exhibition reflects Piero Gilardi’s lifelong dedication to pushing the boundaries of art, emphasizing the interconnectedness of nature, technology, politics and social experience. Reflecting on his own practice working with polyurethane, Gilardi once wrote: 

“Now in retrospect, I think that in my attitude at the time, there was really an anguish over the loss of nature; but there was also on the other hand the confidence for the technology represented in the choice of artificial material… If relationships between people bring with them, along with love, also hatred and suffering, then it is better to freeze everything through the rationality of technology.”⁴

This passage encapsulates Gilardi’s dualistic approach, blending technological optimism with a deep awareness of nature’s fragility. By – rather provocatively – evoking a sense of closeness to nature through synthetic materials, Gilardi embraced a techno-utopian vision that transformed the public’s perception of both art and the environment and led him to become one of the most influential Italian artists of the 20th century.

Notes

1. Piero Gilardi, extract from Trenta anni d’attivismo ecologista: dalle animazioni politiche al parco d’arte vivente, n.d., in Nature Forever. Piero Gilardi, curated by H. Hanru, B. Pietromarchi, M. Scotini at MAXXI, Rome, 13 April – 15 October 2017, Quodlibet, Recanati, 2017, pp. 89-92.
2. Piero Gilardi, excerpt from the video NATURE FOREVER. PIERO GILARDI – Il documentario, Museo MAXXI, 2017
3. Andrea Bellini, except from Piccolo manuale dell’espressione con la gommapiuma, ed. by A. Bellini, Les Presses du Réel, Paris 2013, in Nature Forever. Piero Gilardi, curated by H. Hanru, B. Pietromarchi, M. Scotini at MAXXI, Rome, 13 April – 15 October 2017, Quodlibet, Recanati, 2017, pp. 89-92.
4. Piero Gilardi, excerpt from Dall’Arte alla Vita dalla Vita all’Arte, La Salamandra Edizioni, 1982.

Biographies

Piero Gilardi (1942-2023, Turin, Italy) created his first pieces in polyurethane foam in 1965, a medium that he would later exhibit internationally in cities like Paris, Brussels, Cologne, Hamburg, Amsterdam and New York. From 1968, he stopped producing regular artworks to pursue his interest in materials connected to the technological advancements of the time and engage in the artistic trends like Arte Povera, Land Art and Antiform Art of the late ’60s. This led him to participate in the first two international exhibitions of the new trends at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and at the Bern Kunsthalle. 

As a political activist and facilitator of youth culture, he organized several experiences of collective creativity across Africa, South America and reservations in the USA. In 1981, he resumed his activity in the art world and exhibited installations, accompanied by creative public workshops. By 1985, he had started an artistic research project with new technologies through the IXIANA PROJECT (later presented at the Parc de la Villette in Paris). This work consisted of a technological park in which the public could artistically experiment with digital technologies.  In 1993, he set up a “virtual” hall based on his decades of research at the 45th Biennial in Venice and more recently produced a number of multi-medial interactive installations and participated intensively in international shows like the ARTEC Biennial of Nagoya, ARTIFICES 3 Paris and MULTIMEDIALE 4 Karlsruhe. For many years, he presided over the international association Art Technica, which promoted two Artlab exhibitions of neo-technological art in Turin. He published two theoretical books on his diverse research: Dall’arte alla vita, dalla vita all’arte (From art to life, from life to art), published by La Salamandra in Milan (1981) and Not for Sale, published by Mazzotta in Milan (2000) and Les Presses du reel in Dijon (2003). He also wrote articles for a number of different art magazines such as Juliet and Flash Art. 

Marco Scotini is the head of the Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies Department at NABA (Milan-Rome), Artistic Director of the FM Center for Contemporary Art and Head of Exhibitions Program at Parco d’Arte Vivente (PAV) in Turin. He has curated the Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2015), three editions of Prague Biennale, Anren Biennale (2017), the Second Yinchuan Biennale (2018) and collaborated on two editions of the Bangkok Biennale (2020, 2022). His project, Disobedience Archive, has been traveling for 20 years through international museums and recently it was invited to the 17th Istanbul Biennale, Timis. It is currently on view at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

Special thanks to Enrico Carlo Bonanate, Director of PAV – Parco Arte Vivente – Centro Sperimentale di Arte Contemporanea, and to Dario Giraldi.