Mario Merz

Libero Grande, Naples (acquired directly from the artist)
Thence by descent to the present owners

Mario Merz was a leading member of the Italian Arte Povera group whose use of ordinary, "poor" materials, both natural and manufactured, to poetic effect gained him international recognition and acclaim. Instead of using the classical fragments favoured by many of the Arte Povera artists, Merz drew on another aspect of Italy's heritage: the discoveries of the 13th-century Pisan mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, who developed a sequence in which each numeral is equal to the sum of the two that precede it: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 etc. The sequence reflected Merz's mystical views of the universe's structure and was intended to represent the universal principles of creation and growth. Guided by a fascination with the occurrence of the Fibonacci sequence in nature, the present work has photographs of diners at the Ristorante della Spada in Turin placed beneath the neon numbers, and in each image, the number of people changes in accordance with the sequence above. At the beginning and end of the sequence there is a blank neon and image respectively, to suggest an organic continuum ad infinitum, beyond our understanding and awareness of existence. Merz developed a repertoire of imagery around the Fibonacci sequence to which he referred throughout his career, culminating in the installation of his trademark neon tubes among the ruins of the Imperial Forums in Rome.