Opening Reception
27 November, 6 – 8 pm
Dates
27 November 2025 – 14 February 2026
This November, Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present ‘Piero Manzoni. ‘L’invincibile Jean’ and Early Works 1956 – 1957’ in Basel, conceived in close collaboration with the Fondazione Piero Manzoni in Milan.
A leading figure of the 1950s Italian avant-garde, Piero Manzoni (1933 – 1963) had a profound impact on the course of twentieth-century art during his brief yet prolific career, directly influencing the development of Arte Povera while paving the way for conceptual, body and performance art. Featuring a selection of the artist’s early works on view together for the first time, the exhibition is a rare opportunity to explore this formative phase of Manzoni’s practice, revealing the unexpected foundations on which his later artistic production—including his widely celebrated series of white Achromes—was built.
All artworks © Fondazione Piero Manzoni, Milan
About the Artist
Piero Manzoni
The renowned Italian artist Piero Manzoni emerged as a powerful voice for the avant-garde in the 1950s, debuting as an artist at the ‘4a Fiera mercato: Mostra d’arte contemporanea’ in 1956. A self-taught painter, his work heavily featured anthropomorphic silhouettes and the impressions of objects. He began making his ‘white paintings’—later named ‘Achromes’—in 1957, at first with rough gesso and then with kaolin, as well as with creased canvases or surfaces divided into squares.
In 1959, the artist began his series which experimented with the display of inflated white balloons. The results—‘Corpi d’aria (Bodies of Air)' and ‘Fiato d’artista (Artist’s Breath),’ where balloons were poised on a tripod or wooden plinth—extended the creative experimentation first visualized in the ‘Achromes’ as Manzoni embarked upon works that used an entirely new visual language, reframing artistic interpretation. In July 1960, he presented ‘Consumazione dell’arte / dinamica del pubblico / divorare l’arte’ in Milan, during which he offered the public hard-boiled eggs with his thumbprint on them. By 1961, Manzoni was signing actual people, turning them into ‘living sculptures,’ and awarding them with a certificate of authenticity.
Alongside his work as an abstract avant-garde painter, Manzoni contributed to and collaborated with numerous artist groups and initiatives. As his artistic activity intensified, he began participating in group shows and signing manifestos alongside other artists, including Enrico Baj, Guido Biasi, Ettore Sordini, and Angelo Verga. For a period of time he embraced the Movimento Arte Nucleare, before abandoning it in 1958.
On several occasions, he showed his work with Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani, and he collaborated with artists of the Zero group in Düsseldorf and other European neo-avant-garde groups. In 1959, he founded the Galleria Azimut in Milan with Castellani, opening the gallery with an exhibition of his ‘Linee (Lines).’ The pair simultaneously published two issues of the Azimuth magazine. The second issue (1960) included one of Manzoni’s seminal texts ‘Libera dimensione’ or ‘Free dimension.’
Current Exhibitions
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