MAXXI, National Museum of 21st-Century Arts 
Omaggio all’Arte Povera
Rome, which was the living stage of that Movement since its early beginnings and the place where leading figures lived, participates in the exhibition with institutions that collect the historical works of the Movement that have been integrated with some new works for this occasion.  The ”Tribute to Arte Povera” organized by the Maxxi Museum in Rome offers an “interpretative view of space by the artists Penone, Kounellis and Zorio that have produced an in situ intervention relative to the fluid conditions of the hosting architecture, accepting or refusing the same, getting inside or outside of it”.  Two large installations by Jannis Kounellis (one of them called “Untitled” from 1988 has already been showcased around the world many times, where a series of iron plates screwed to each other lean towards the left one on top of the other, in a trapezoid shape, giving an idea of asymmetry that disappears, leaving us with a sort of mystery) and by Gilberto Zorio, who conceived the work standing on the Museum square that can also be viewed by everyone during the night (steel tubes, fibreglass reinforced plastic and light make up a futuristic structure that brings to mind an overturned canoe, motionless yet illuminated and buzzing, recalling the aesthetics of the machine) uphold a dialogue with Giuseppe Penone’s “Sap Sculptures”, an installation smelling of resin and leather that he planned for the Italian Pavillion at the 2007 Venice Biennale Exhibition and which is now on permanent display at the Maxxi Museum.

Triennale di Milano 
Arte Povera 1967 - 2011
This review staged at the Triennale, promoter of the exhibition together with the Rivoli Castle, features an anthological title:  “Arte Povera 1967-2011”.  It showcases about fifty works of art that have been distributed over the ground floor (where the historical productions, going from 1967 to 1975, are located) and the first floor (the premises of the spectacular installations created since 1975).  Works that excellently represent the paths and research of each single author, like the matches and reactions between opposite material qualities in Giovanni Anselmo’s works, writings and objects by Alighiero Boetti, the assembly of lead and ice or tobacco leaves by Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro’s geometrical structures, works in coal and jute by Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz’s igloos and neons, the fragile material used by Marisa Merz, icons and references to myths by the conceptual Giulio Paolini, archaic animals such as dinosaurs by Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone’s tree trunks, mirrors and rags used by Michelangelo Pistoletto, photographs and constructions by Emilio Prini, Gilberto Zorio’s alchemical and cosmic energies. 

MADRE Museum, Naples 
Arte Povera pił Azioni Povere 1968
In October 1968, just a few months following the exhibition staged at the de’ Foscherari Gallery in Bologna, Arte Povera arranged a meeting in the south, in Amalfi, for the “Arte Povera pił Azioni povere” display that was located in the Antichi Arsenali building.  The spirit, energy and even part of the works from that exhibition will today be found in the one set up between the 14th century naves of the Santa Maria Donnaregina Church that is part of the Neapolitan museum.  In any case, the prominent figures of Arte Povera are at home here since part of the permanent collection envisages works painted directly on walls, ceilings and floors.   
Of the approx. thirty works on show, there are some that were created for the 1968 display, such as the white sheet entitled “Direction” by Giovanni Anselmo (furrowed by a compass that points to the North) or the very famous upside-down Italy created by Luciano Fabro.
The two most spectacular pieces are the interventions-quotations that Michelangelo Pistoletto and Jannis Kounellis planned for two special places inside the church.  Pistoletto proposes a new version of his 1968 installation-performance called “Monumento di stracci” (Monument of Rags) that he had piled up in 1968 around a sepulchre in the Amalfi Arsenals; instead it was positioned in Naples on the funeral monument of Mary of Hungary, Queen of Naples, that was planned by the sculptor Tino di Camaino in 1325.
Inside the church cloister, Kounellis gives life to “Daisy of Fire”:  his version of a typical Neapolitan shrine where the figure of the Virgin Mary is substituted by a flower-shaped iron version lit by a flame.