TEXTS OF PIERO MANZONI

For the Discovery of a Zone of Images

Without myth there is no art.

The work of art draws its opportunity from an unconscious impulse, origin and death of a collective substrate, but the artistic fact lies in the awareness of the gesture; an intuitive awareness, as the technique of artistic activity is intuitive clarification (inventio).

Once the gesture has been made, the work becomes a document of the occurrence of an artistic fact.

This discovery leads to a clear awareness of the historical development of the work of art.

We therefore understand art as the continuous historical discovery (inventio) of authentic and virgin zones.

Our approach is an alphabet of prime images. The picture is our area of freedom; it is in this space that we explore, that we invent images; virgin images, justified only by themselves, the validity of which is determined solely by the quantity of the JOY OF LIFE they contain.

Camillo Corvi-Mora, Piero Manzoni, Ettore Sordini, Giuseppe Zecca

Milan, December 9, 1956

Pamphlet, white with black characters, ca. 18.7 × 25.4 cm open, ca. 18.7 × 12.7 cm closed. Inside, along with the text on the left, three contemporary works by the artists are reproduced in black and white: Nascita (Birth) by Sordini, Fiori per il cielo (Flowers for the Sky) by Zecca, and Milano et Mitologia (Milan and Mythology) by Manzoni