Born in 1942 in Turin. Lives and works in Turin (Italy)

Piero Gilardi was one of the founders of the Arte Povera movement in the 1960s, and the creator of the famous « Nature carpets », samples of artificial nature made of polyurethane foam. During the 1970s he explored some different ways that quickly cast his art into a more relational dimension. He carried out experiments of art therapy and collective creativity in Nicaragua and Africa, and simultaneously got involved in social and political activism. From the 1980s onwards his work kept focussing on Organic Art and Emerging technologies. In 2008, he created the Living Art Park in Turin where he develops his conception of an art exploring every mechanism of the living. Just as a « Leçon de choses », the exhibition takes us on a tour through the different chapters of a work relying on the belief that art can change life, a work that still matters even after fifty years.