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Marisa MERZ (b. 1926, Turin – d. 2019, Turin) was a leading figure in Italian contemporary art and a key artist associated with the Arte Povera movement. Emerging in the 1960s, her practice developed through an experimental approach to materials, form and space, encompassing sculpture, drawing, painting, film and installation. Her early Living Sculptures, made from spiralling aluminium sheets, challenged conventional notions of sculpture through their delicate, mutable forms. Incorporating everyday materials and traditional craft techniques, Merz developed an intimate and deeply personal artistic language that blurred the boundaries between art and life. Her work evolved through an ongoing process of transformation, in which material, time, memory and the human figure became closely intertwined.
In 2026, on the centenary of her birth, Marisa Merz – La danza delle ore will be presented across three institutions: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Fondazione Merz and GAM – Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino (forthcoming). More recent exhibitions dedicated to her work include Ascoltare lo spazio (In den Raum hören) at Kunstmuseum Bern (2025), and Marisa Merz. Ascoltare lo spazio at LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’art contemporain et d’art brut, Lille (2024). Her work has been presented in major international institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which presented her major American retrospective The Sky Is a Great Space (2017), followed by its presentation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and other institutions in Europe (2018); the Serpentine Gallery, London (2013); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1996); and the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1994). She participated in several editions of the Venice Biennale, receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013 and the Special Jury Prize in 2001.