Exposition of Italian outsider art in Paris

poster of the exposition

From March 23, 2012 until January 6, 2013 the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris had an exposition of Italian outsider art, entitled Banditi dell'Arte and curated by Gustavo Giacoa and Martine Lusardy.

picture courtesy of Katie Bush

A first part of the exposition had creations made in the early 20th century by people in the margin of society (psychiatric patients, inmates of prisons), coming from collections like the Lombroso Museum and the Reggio-Emilia museum on the history of psychiatry, supplied with visual art as made -from the seventies on-  in art workshops that are more or less related to psychiatric hospitals and mental health care institutions (like La Tinaia in Florence or Blu Camello in Livorno)

A second part of the exposition focused on people whose creative activity can be placed under the umbrella of  "outsider art". Here one could come along self-taught painters and sculptors, like Bonaria Manca, Giovanni Podesta and Carlo Zinelli and creators of art environments, like Luigi Buffo, Mario Andreoli, Marcello Cammi, Luigi Lineri, Vincent Brunetti and Maurizio Becherini.

As in other European countries, outsider art is relatively unknown in Italy, so this exposition may have been a welcome opportunity to raise more interest in what's going on in this field in Italy.

Halle Saint Pierre
2 rue Ronsard 75018 

Paris, France