Claudio
Parmiggiani

Claudio
Parmiggiani

Italian, born in 1943


Claudio Parmiggiani's works stand out for being both humorous and conceptually far-reaching. Considered close to the Arte Povera Italian movement, the artist developed a very personal poetics expressed through paintings, sculptures and unique installations. One of his recurring subject matters is the relationship between artworks and memory.

Claudio Parmiggiani organizes surprising associations in order to create aesthetic and signifying objects. His masterpiece, however, is the Delocazione (“de-locations”) series, which he started in the 1970s. Parmiggiani builds an installation and sets it on fire with a combustion of tires, which produces thick smoke. When the objects are removed, only their negative outline remains imprinted in soot. These fragile ‘negatives’ whose motif is withdrawal earned him the qualification of génie du non-lieu (genius of non-place) coined by Georges Didi-Huberman.

The Claudio Parmiggiani artworks held in the Pinault Collection, including Delocazione (1998), were first presented in 2006 at the Where Are We Going? exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, in Venice.