#pigeoni

Maurizio Cattelan, Turisti, 1997

Humorous yet provoking, Turisti was executed in 1997 by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, whose works have continuously challenged the nature of the contemporary art world since the late 1980s. Notorious for his controversial sculptures such as one depicting Pope John Paul II felled by a large meteorite or another one where a young Hitler is kneeling in prayer, Cattelan’s oeuvre is a satirical commentary on the contradictions and absurdities of not only the art world, but of Western civilization in general. The present lot was first exhibited in the Italian pavilion of the 1997 Venice Biennale, curated by Germano Celant, which adopted as its theme, the mixing of generations in Post-War Italian art. Cattelan explained that on his earliest visit to the pavilion one month prior to the opening of the exhibition, he had found the inside in shambles and crammed with pigeons. When confronted with the large, vacant space to fill, Cattelan responded by leaving it exactly how it was when he first saw it. 200 taxidermied pigeons were installed perched on rafters and the edges of dividing walls throughout the pavilion with fictitious excrements positioned on the floor, leading the visitors to look above and notice the pigeons. Cattelan stays true to the Biennale’s theme by producing a work that compliments – or some might say ridicules – the Arte Povera movement, an important Italian post-war artistic movement in which artists realized their works by using unconventional or “poor” materials with a common interest of merging art with life.