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Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled 2001, photo Zeno Zotti
The Artsper team regularly looks over all works of art of one artist and chooses 10 of them that the team absolutely wants to keep. Even though it is a completely subjective retrospective, this is the occasion for you to discover again the genius of the artist. Major figure and terrible child of the contemporary art, Maurizio Cattelan is one of the artists more collected of these last years. Artsper offers you to look over several points and anecdotes that you must know about the genius agitator Maurizio Cattelan.
Born in Padoue, Italy, in 1961, he moved to New York in the 90s.
Maurizio Catellan for Pakett, 2000
He is nicknamed the “Buster Keaton” of the contemporary art.
The American actor, Buster Keaton
Two of his “polemic” sculptures that you must absolutely know are Him and La nona Ora, putting respectively on stage a Hitler kneeling and the pope Jean-Paul 2 crushed by a meteorite.
La Ora Nona
Him
In 1995, Maurizio Cattelan put on stage his parisian gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin, disguised in pink rabbit with a giant phallus shape.
The French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin
Cattelan founded both the magazines Toilet Paper and Permanent Food.
Permanent Food Magazine
Toilet Paper Magazine
In 1996, in the framework of an exhibition at the Appel Arts Center of Amsterdam, Cattelan stole the work of an artist exhibited in a next door gallery, packing everything and presenting it as his own work, “Another Fucking Readymade”.
An Other Fucking Ready Made, 1996
In 2009, he founded his own foundation Oblomov allowing an artist to live for a year provided that he did not exposed his work.
fondation Oblomov, 2009
In New York, he opened his own gallery named Wrong Gallery, constantly closed where nothing was sold. On the door we could find a notice on which was written “Fuck off we’re closed”.
The Wrong Gallery
In 2001, during the Venice Biennale, Cattelan invited more than 100 big collectors and gallery owners at Palermo. He took them for a ride in the biggest garbage dump of the island in which he installed a replica of the big white letters of the Hollywood hill.
During the retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim, New York, in 2011, Maurizio Cattelan created the surprise by announcing his artistic retreat.
Guggenheim, 2012 exhibition
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