Maurizio Cattelan

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Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist born in Padova, Italy, in 1960. He is currently one of the most collected contemporary artists.

1 Biography
2 Artistic Style
3 Works
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Cattelan did not attend art school but taught himself. He did many odd jobs, including one at a mortuary, which some credit for his macabre taste. He started his career in Forlì (Italy) making wooden furniture in the eighties where he came to know some artists like Ettore Sottsass. He made a catalogue of his work which he sent to galleries. This promotion gave him an opening in design and contemporary art. He created a sculpture of an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, wore a costume of a figurine with a giant head of Picasso, and he affixed a Milanese gallerist to a wall with tape. During this period, he also created the Oblomov Foundation.

Today he is one of the most popular Italian artists to have emerged internationally in the 1990s, and his reputation continues to grow.

Most recently, Cattelan has taken on the role of curator. He resides in the East Village of New York, but maintains a foothold in Milan. He created a magazine called Permanent Food which includes images stolen from other magazines.

[edit] Artistic Style

His art often combines sculpture and performance, but also includes actions, text-pieces, and magazines, to mention some.

His work is controversial, both within and beyond the art community. He is said to be a master of provocation who shuns the media and abuses the art world. He also attacks the idealism of modern art. His art often practices gravity, humor, and wild irony. Some consider him the king of the pranksters. To provocate his critics, he opened his own New York gallery (the Wrong Gallery) in which nothing is sold, and which remains permanently closed. He often sends his assistant Massimiliano Gioni to interviews in his place - one New York Times reporter was a victim of this habit. Once, in Milan, he hung three mannequins of children from an oak tree; an outraged man split his skull when trying to take the sculpture down. The work was removed, but attracted much television coverage at the time.

He has been described by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in a Gene Weingarten interview, "as one of the great post-Duchampian artists and a smartass, too". He has also been compared to Buster Keaton.

[edit] Works

One of his most famous artworks is a sculpture of Pope John Paul II hit by a meteorite, titled La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), made in 1999. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London as part of the prestigious Apocalypse show, and was sold at Christie's for $3 million.
In 2000 he persuaded his gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin to spend a month dressed as a giant pink phallus.
As part of the 2001 Venice Biennale, he erected a full sized HOLLYWOOD sign over the largest rubbish tip on Palermo, Sicily.
Par Peur de l'Amour, a sculpture of an elephat in a Klu Klux Klan uniform, sold at Christie's in 2004 for $2.7 million.