PIERO MANZONI Merda d'Artista 2013, Sealed tin can with lithographed paper and shrink wrapped with a fingerprint seal

The artist's signature is plate stamped on the top of the work with the unique number 16 stamped on the top. 

The inscription on the underside reads:

 Piero Manzoni/1963-2013/Merda d'artista dell'anniversario/Maggio 2013/Prodotta e inscatolata da:/Fondazione Piero Manzoni/Milano, numbered 16 

Conceptual artist Piero Manzoni, an enfant terrible of Italian art in the 1950s and early 1960s, is best known for Artist's Shit (Merda d'artista) (1961), 90 sealed cans priced by their weight in gold, one of many works that question the nature of the art object. Other stunts included balloons filled with "artist's breath" and “Living Sculptures,” human subjects signed by Manzoni. His “Achromes” paintings (from 1957 onward), canvases covered in materials like gesso, kaolin, fabric, and bread that undergo sagging, creasing, and other temporal changes, suggest the influence of Yves Klein and Robert Rauschenberg. The present work is descriptive of Manzoni’s ironic and perverse style. Calling into play his specific dialogue with the relationship between art production and human production, the current lot is a reproduction of the artist's seminal work, “Merda d’Artista," in which Manzoni packaged multiple 30mg tins of his excrement as if it was manufactured for sale.

SIGNATURE

The artist's signature is plate stamped on the top of the work with the unique number 16 stamped on the top. 

The inscription on the underside reads: 

 Piero Manzoni/1963-2013/Merda d'artista dell'anniversario/Maggio 2013/Prodotta e inscatolata da:/Fondazione Piero Manzoni/Milano