«He was really into artists’ books»: i libri d’artista della Galleria Sperone, 1970-1975

https://www.memofonte.it/studi-di-memofonte/numero-28-2022/#francesco-guzzetti-he-was-really-into-artists-books-i-libri-dartista-della-galleria-sperone-1970-1975 In the article, I focus on a specific side of the activity of the gallery of Gian Enzo Sperone, one of the leading dealers championing the new avant-garde emerging in the late 1960s on an international level. Between 1970 and 1975, at the same time when the gallery increasingly concentrated on the latest tendencies of conceptual art, Sperone opened a small publishing house, devoted to the publication of artist's books. Conceived as proper artworks and mostly released independently from the schedule of the exhibitions held at the gallery, twenty-one books were created by some of the major figures of the new avant-garde, including the likes of Carl Andre, Giovanni Anselmo, Robert Barry, Hanne Darboven, Hans Peter Feldmann, Hamish Fulton, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner. The article consists of two section. In the first part, I introduce and contextualize the interest of Sperone in publishing artist's books and the relevance of this format in the practice of the artists of conceptual art and arte povera. The second part is a list of the books. Each of them has been properly described, retrieving all available information concerning the technical details and the history of its making, and extensively analyzed in its structure, with regard to the broader activity of each artist. Most of the titles have never been studied before. The list is the first account in detail of the whole activity of Sperone as a publisher. By doing so, I could shed light on works of primary importance made by conceptual and arte povera artists, thus providing a contribution to the research around their practice and the study of the evolution and assessment of the new avant-garde in the first half of the 1970s.