Piero Manzoni’s torment

Piero Manzoni, an Italian avant-garde artist famous for canning his own excrement, died 60 years ago today, still only 30 years old. Though not a diarist by nature, he left behind one year-long diary, published in 2013 which reveals what he called his ‘torment, i.e. waverings, changes of mind and doubts about art, religion and politics. Unfortunately, copies of the book are difficult to find; and, across the internet, I can find no extracts from the book, in Italian or translated into English.

Count Meroni Manzoni di Chiosca e Poggiolo was born in 1933 in Soncino, northern Italy, the eldest of five children in a family with aristocratic roots. However, he grew up in Milan. He studied at the Jesuit Liceo Leone XIII, and then at the law faculty of the Catholic University of Sacred Heart. During the summer holidays, he stayed in Albisola where he came into contact with avant-garde artists such as Lucio Fontana. 

Self-taught as a painter, Manzoni first exhibited in Soncino in 1956, with his early works showing the influence of Enrico Baj. But in early 1957, he visited an exhibition of Yves Klein’s blue paintings at Galleria Apollinaire in Milan, and thereafter his own art changed dramatically. In 1958, for example, he created a series of plain white, ‘achrome’ pictures, and the following year he drew lines on sheets and sealed them in boxes. 

Manzoni eschewed normal artist’s materials, instead using everything from rabbit fur to human excrement. His work is widely seen as a critique of the mass production and consumerism that was changing Italian society after the war. According to Phaidon, ‘Manzoni’s great legacy seems to lie in his prescient satire of a kind of art where the artist’s name is crucial, while his or her direct involvement or talents seem to be immaterial, and where a global market can buoy even the most lowly objects.’ Famously or infamously, he produced, in 1961, his work Artist’s Shit - 90 cans, each numerically labelled with title labels in German, French or English. He died tragically of a heart attack on 6 February 1963. His work is said to have directly influenced a younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera exhibition held in Genoa in 1967. Further information on Manzoni is also available at Wikipedia, Tate, Guggenheim and Artland Magazine.

In early 1954, Manzoni began to keep a diary and, apart from odd gaps, managed to maintain it for about 16 months, producing almost 300 hand-written pages. The text was ‘curated’ by Gaspare Luigi Marcone and published in its original unedited format by Electa as Diario. Electa says the book reveals ‘precious information about what Manzoni read (Ariosto, Hemingway, Proust and so on), the art exhibitions he visited, his first encounters in the art world, the many films he saw at the cinema and his numerous travels in Italy and Europe.

Electa adds: ‘One of the most interesting things to emerge from the manuscript is what [Manzoni] calls his ‘torment’: waverings, changes of mind and doubts about art, religion and politics. He also pondered about his future, oscillating constantly between optimism and pessimism, seriousness and irony. In fact, at that time, Manzoni was still undecided whether to devote himself entirely to painting or to become a writer. His first attempts at writing about themes connected with philosophy, existentialism and esthetics, some of which he was to refer to again later in his artistic career, are especially important. In fact, it was probably his interest in these subjects which, between the end of 1954 and January 1955, eventually persuaded him to abandon his law studies at the Sacro Cuore University in Milan to devote himself to the study of philosophy at Rome University. A remarkable but ‘complex’ read, both because of the subjects tackled and due to the author’s handwriting, which verges on the illegible at times. It’s probably the first true ‘Manzoni workshop’.’

I can find no extracts online from Manzoni’s diary in English or Italian, and there is only one second hand copy currently available for sale - at Abebooks, costing over £50.