In 1967 the Italian art critic Garmano Celant coined the term Arte Povera to describe the work of a generation of young Italian artists who used a simple "poverty" of gestures and materials to explore the relation between art and life. The work of the Arte Povera artists - Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Giulo Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Emilio Prini and Gilberto Zorio - continues to be a major influence on contemporary international art. Art Povera bridges the natural and the artificial, the urban and the rural, local tradition and global modernity. Critic and curator Carolyn Christiv-Bakargiev is one of the world's leading authorities on post-war Italian art and culture. She collaborated directly with many of the artists in the making of this book, which is the most comprehensive survey available.