Daniel Buren & Michelangelo Pistoletto

The 2023 exhibition in the spaces of the Palais d’Iéna brings together two artists who have had exceptional careers: Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, Italy, 1933) and Daniel Buren (Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 1938). Since the early 1960s, their work has been exhibited in major museums, institutions, and galleries around the world.

An unprecedented dialog between the two artists, the exhibition responds to the unique architecture of the Palais d’Iéna, designed by Auguste Perret in 1937. The art will play with the building’s angles, its large-scale spaces, the subtle polychrome of its exposed concrete, its exceptional luminosity, its urban surroundings, the interplay of perspectives and levels, and its complex symmetry. The historical themes brought into focus by the two artists seem to lent themselves to their work.

The project is commissioned by the art historian Matthieu Poirier and supported by Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana, Rome, São Paulo, Paris, Dubai).

Born in 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Daniel Buren lives and works in situ. In the 1960s, he developed a radical type of painting which plays simultaneously on an economy of means and the relationship between the work and where it is exhibited. In 1986, he made the in situ work Les Deux Plateaux for the main courtyard of Paris’s Palais Royal. The same year, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He is one of the most active and well-known artists on the international art scene. In 2007, Buren received the Praemium Imperiale for painting.

Born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, Michelangelo Pistoletto is one of the most influential contemporary artists of his generation. His interest in self-portraits can be seen in his Quadri Specchianti (Mirror Paintings) which directly include the viewer and real time in the work. In the 1990s, with the creation of the Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, he fostered an active relationship between art and different spheres of society, with the aim of inspiring social and cultural change. In 2004, the artist announced the latest phase of his work, « Terzo Paradiso » (‘The Third Paradise’).