Piero Manzoni and ZERO. A European Creative Region

The book and video documentary PIERO MANZONI AND ZERO present the richness and meaning of the artistic relationships between Italy and Europe (particularly, Germany), at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, around the pivotal figure of Piero Manzoni. One of the protagonists and catalysers of this revolutionary creative context moving beyond Informel into a new form of creativity, internationally known as the ZERO movement, Manzoni is the forerunner and unexhausted “travelling messenger” of a new geography of relations. His continuous journeys and activity mark a new transnational perspective: an alternative vision compared to North American art, but also dissimilar to the Parisian milieu. ZERO operates according to this new geography: it travels through Milan, Rome, Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Düsseldorf, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Anvers, Copenhagen and Zagreb. Following different lines and standards and producing a massive exchange of letters, works, exhibitions, publications, these artists establish new creative and at the same time methodical guidelines, as well as new hubs and places that inexorably adopt such guidelines, thus amplifying and spreading their effects.