Vettor Pisani (1934, Bari, Italy – 2011, Rome, Italy) was one of the most important exponents of artistic research in Italy from the 1970s onwards, and one of the most personal and visionary authors of the art scene in his generation. Across his 2D works and sculpture he combined conceptual investigation with irony, the sacred with the profane, and the art of the past with provocations of the present. He was particularly inspired by the readymades of Marcel Duchamp and the works of the Surrealist movement.

As noted by Piero Tomassoni: “If Borges taught us that life itself is a citation, Pisani plays on the crueller field of cannibalistic, incestuous appropriation. In his work, the union of genres signifies both the mixture of Romanticism, Surrealism, and behavioural art, and the (con)fusion of male and female in the androgyne […]. Embodying the spiritual and earthly creativity of both man and woman, the androgyne is the artist himself, alchemist and dadaist, at the borderline between eroticism and destruction, which, as Bataille notes, are two sides of the same coin”.

Selected Exhibitions

Galleria La Salita, Rome; Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Provincial Council of Valencia; Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea of Trento; Guggengeim Museum, New York; Fondazione Morra-Palazzo Ruffo di Bagnara, Naples; MACRO, Rome; Documenta V, Kassel (1972); the Venice Biennale (1972, 1976, 1978, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1993, 1995); the Rome Quadrenniale (1973, 1986, 1992); the XV Bienal, São Paulo, (1979); Contemporanea (1973-1974); Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Bologna; and the Nouvelle Biennale de Paris, Paris.

Selected Collections

Madre Napoli, Naples; Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, Massechusetts.

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