Rich quality of Poor Art

After the stumbling behemoth of Century City, Tate Modern has come up trumps with the gorgeous retrospective of Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, and now this of Arte Povera, the Italian movement of the 1960s that brought the country back to the centre of the international art scene.

Translated literally as Poor Art, the movement came out of the radical art centres of Milan, Turin and Rome, centering around the work of some 14 home-grown artists who rejected the primacy of painting and traditional materials.

Though the movement was politically radical and anti-commercial in intent, the use of manufactured industrial materials undermined its original gesture of using cheap products.

Mario Merz in particular produced welded metal structures of impressive dimensions, creating, in 1968, his seminal series of iron igloos. Likewise, Marisa Merz used shiny, coiled strips of aluminium stapled together to form an enormous hanging ceiling sculpture. The concern with process and with the primacy of materials, both man-made and natural, led to 'interventions' with the landscape, giving rise to the land-based art of the 1970s. Giuseppe Penone, one of the early tree-huggers (who did actually embrace trees for his art), recorded his various actions and interventions in photographs.

But it's Alighiero Boetti who most impresses, both in his range of materials and in the broadness of his vision. An inclusive concern with texture, space and form remind one of the sensual appeal of objects as ordinary as bundles of coloured wooden sticks (pictured).

Today until Aug 19, Tate Modern, Bankside SE1, Sun to Thu 10am to 6pm (last admission 5pm), Fri and Sat 10am to 10pm (last admission 9pm), £6.50, £4.50 concs, combined ticket with Giorgio Morandi £10, £6 concs.

Tel: 020 7887 8000
Advanced tickets: 0870 842 2233
www.tate.org.uk
Tube: Waterloo/Blackfriars