Examining the Italian artist-s career-long exploration of the human figure, this book offers new perspectives on the history of postwar and contemporary art Widely regarded as the central protagonist of Arte Povera, the twentieth-century Italian art movement characterized by its rejection of representation, Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933) is known for his movement-defining Minus Objects and iconic mirror paintings, as well as his recent social practice addressing migration and climate change. What has unified Pistoletto-s work over six decades, argues author Tenley Bick, is his persistent, and seemingly paradoxical, investigation of figuration, most often as a system of representation of the human body. Michelangelo Pistoletto: Figuration and Cultural Politics traces the figure as a throughline across the artist-s painting, photomontage, sculpture, installation, performance, and social practice, from the formative years of his career in the 1950s to today. It situates Pistoletto-s ex
