Father and Son
In June 1973 Pistoletto asked his father to show alongside him in an exhibition at the Galleria Sperone in Turin. For the occasion his father produced some works with which he interacted with those of his son, just as the latter had done with his father’s work, that same year, with the Self-Portrait through My Father [Autoritratto attraverso mio padre], a photographic reproduction of a pencil portrait made by his father when Michelangelo was just three months old. At the Sperone exhibition Pistoletto showed several Mirror Paintings. His father showed oil paintings, still lives of metal objects that reflected the space around them, including himself in the act of painting. In the catalogue the two artists appear together in a photo that shows them reflected in a large, framed mirror in the father’s studio. In 1976 Pistoletto would interact with his father’s work again by creating an installation in his studio in San Sicario called The Furniture from My Father’s Studio in My Studio [I mobili dello studio di mio padre nel mio studio]. And in 1977 Pistoletto returned to the Self-Portrait through My Father in An Hour Dedicated to the 31 Days of the Month of March 1977 [Un'ora dedicata ai 31 giorni del mese di marzo 1977] — a work, produced by Edizioni Lucio Amelio, made up of 31 sheets of drawing paper reproducing that self-portrait, each of which carries one of the 31 phrases that make up a text written by Pistoletto over an hour.

For an in-depth analysis of the relationship between Pistoletto’s work and his father’s the reader is referred to the catalogue of the exhibition “Padre e figlio” [“Father and Son”] staged in Biella in 2019.
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Self-Portrait Through My Father, 1933-1973
Father and Son, 1973
The Furniture from My Father’s Studio in My Studio, 1976
 MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO
Works