Through the extraordinary generosity of Fondazione Piero Manzoni and Hauser & Wirth, Magazzino Italian Art has received the gift of two immersive environments conceived by Manzoni in 1961, at a date when conceptualism and installation art were only starting to appear on the art world’s horizon, marking a singular, conceptually driven contribution to the evolving language of installation art in Italy. Magazzino will unveil these exceptional gifts, accompanied by a contextual selection of works by Manzoni on loan from distinguished American collections, in the exhibition Piero Manzoni: Total Space, opening to the public on Monday, September 8, 2025.
Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu, co-founders of Magazzino, said, “We are grateful to the Fondazione Manzoni and Hauser & Wirth for entrusting these major gifts to Magazzino, where they can now be seen in the company of the museum’s extensive collection of Arte Povera. Through their generosity, the donors have recognized Magazzino as the primary institution in North America for collecting, exhibiting, and studying the cutting-edge Italian art of the postwar era.”
In 1957, searching for what he described as a “new language” and “total transformation,” Piero Manzoni began to create Achromes: works made of gesso on canvas, in which white had no allusive or symbolic value but was a colorless surface. As he continued the series, he experimented further with the construction of “neutral” spaces using materials that included kaolin, cotton wool, polystyrene, synthetic fibers, and fur.
Envisioning a next step in an art of “total space,” he wrote in 1961 to his friend the Dutch artist Henk Peeters (1925-2013) of his wish to create an artwork that would be a room of white fur, and another artwork that would be a room coated in white fluorescent paint. These projects were unrealized at the time of Manzoni’s death in 1963, at age 29.
In 2019, Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo curated the exhibition Piero Manzoni: Materials of His Time at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. For the exhibition, Hauser & Wirth and Fondazione Piero Manzoni commissioned New York-based architect Stephanie Goto to realize the two rooms that Manzoni had imagined. The rooms were subsequently exhibited at Hauser & Wirth New York in the 2019 exhibition Piero Manzoni: Lines, Materials of His Time.
Piero Manzoni: Total Space will remain on view at Magazzino Italian Art through March 23, 2026. Public programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition will be announced at a later date.
About Piero Manzoni
Born in 1933 in Soncino, Italy, as Count Meroni Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo, Piero Manzoni was self-taught as an artist, beginning his career with gestural abstract paintings (exhibited at Soncino’s Castello Sforzesco in 1956, when he was 23) and with the writing of manifestos. In 1957, he participated in group exhibitions in Munich and Milan, showing with artists including Lucio Fontana, and after seeing an exhibition of the work of Yves Klein began to produce his series of Achromes. In 1959, with artist Enrico Castellani, he co-founded the journal Azimuth and Galleria Azimut in Milan.
During 1959 and 1960, Manzoni exhibited a notable series of conceptual artworks: 12 Linee (12 Lines), Corpi d’Aria (Bodies of Air), and Consumption of Art by the Art-Devouring Public, in which he distributed hard-boiled eggs marked with his thumbprint. During these same years he produced Fiato d’Artista (Artist’s Breath), a series of inflated toy balloons attached to wooden bases, and his best-known work, Merda d’Artista (Artist’s Shit), a series of 90 small, inscribed, sealed cans whose asking price was pegged to the current value of gold. He died in his studio in Milan of a heart attack in 1963, at age 29.
Manzoni’s legacy is carried on by the Milan-based Fondazione Piero Manzoni, which was established by his family. Rosalia Pasqualino di Marineo, a niece of the artist, has served as Director of the Fondazione since 2009. She has curated numerous projects and exhibitions and edited or contributed to several books about Manzoni, most recently Merda d’artista: That Scandalous Can (2025).