BY ABBY MONTANEZ
e Hudson Valley has become a
mecca for commercial art spaces, and
an unlikely one at that. It's also where
long-time art advocates Nancy Olnick
and Giorgio Spanu call home, and
recently opened their 20,000-square-
foot private exhibition, Magazzino.
Focusing exclusively on postwar and
contemporary Italian art, the hus-
band-and-wife duo alongside archi-
tect Miguel Quismondo and Mag-
azzino Director Vittorio Calabrese,
hope to pay tribute to the Arte Povera
movement and bring an understand-
ing to those in the U.S.
What began in 1967 was a revolu-
tion that translates literally to "poor
art." e term was coined by an Ital-
ian art critic, Germano Celant, who
organized his first Arte Povera-style
show that year. At the time, "poor"
didn't mean impoverished but ref-
erenced a type of minimalism that
Polish director, Jerzy Grotowski, in-
corporated into his theater produc-
tion. Grotowski wanted to bypass
all barriers that distracted from the
connection between the actor and the
audience. Work from the Arte Povera
movement emulates that same con-
nection. Calabrese explained, "It is
art that goes straight to the core. e
way Arte Povera does that is it speaks
directly to the world. It uses everyday
materials as common language."
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