Christian Boltanski. Monte di Pietà

Christian Boltanski (Paris, 1944), undoubtedly one of the most interesting French artists in the panorama of contemporary art, has been a leading figure on the international art scene for over 20 years. He began his artistic career at a very young age with his large canvas paintings and in 1968 abandoned painting altogether. Since the mid-eighties the contents of his works have been pervaded by the awareness of the memory of the tragic events of European history during the Second World War. This publication presents themes dearest to the artist: memory collected in everyday objects, evoked relics of a collective past, redemption-through the artist's intervention
-of nameless people without a history. The ambience of the exhibition, conceived as an integral part of the work, is suggestive: enormous rooms which once belonged to pawnbrokers at Palzzo Branciforte in Palermo, the walls lined with shelves built in 1801, when it was taken over by a famous bank, Monte di Pietà.