L'igloo di Mario Merz come forma del tempo

The igloo has characterised the career of the Turin artist Mario Merz ever since he joined Arte Povera. Since then, Merz has reproposed the form of the igloo in numerous variations, exhibiting them in the most important national and international museums. Over the years, statements by the artist himself and critical reflections have accumulated around this symbolic form, contributing to its conceptual complexity. However, in the artist’s poetics, the igloo is configured above all as a cultural archetype, a metaphor for human life and its basic needs. With the reinvention of the igloo, Merz makes an imaginary journey to the origins of culture by exploring the concepts of protection, survival and resistance in order to define it as a form of relationship with time. Starting from a contextualisation of the Merz igloo in the climate of Arte Povera and the related historical-stylistic issues, the contribution examines the symbolic and cosmological implications of Merz’s poetics, providing an alternative interpretation of the igloo to the dominant ideological one. This analysis makes use of a review of the critical literature on Merz’s poetics and igloos as well as a comparison with the meanings that emerged from the analysis of other cycles of works by the same artist.