Claudio Costa

This is the first book devoted to the entire artistic oeuvre of Claudio Costa. It is not a catalogue raisonné but rather the beginning of a complex, systematic study of the work of one of the most sensible personalities in Italian contemporary art of the second half of the twentieth century. A complex artist, with deep interests on cultural anthropology, on alchemical secrets, on chemical processes, on philosophical, poetic and literary studies.
A leading personality in one of the most shocking seasons of contemporary art, present at the great international events such as documenta 6 in Kassel in 1977, or the Venice Biennale in 1986 and 1990, he had close relationships with the most important artists of his time, conceiving and creating in 1992 the ‘Museo Attivo delle Forme Inconsapevoli’ inside the psychiatric hospital in Quarto, Genoa. Claudio Costa reactivated the magical liturgy of the shaman-artist who erects his own salvific totem and adorns it with fears and horrors that must be accepted and embraced so they can be overcome. Art represents for the artist the magic of redemption, the reassuring place that is not afraid to exhibit monsters, that is able to calm nightmares.

Contents

The colours of acid

Claudio Costa: The Masks and the Costumes
Danilo Eccher

The Museum of Man

Maori Anthropology

The Necessary God. Claudio Costa's Archetype Workshop
Federico Vercellone

Comparison of objects

Investigating an objetc

Antropology re-buried. Documenta 1977

Artist, Anthropologist, Shaman
Mattia Fumanti

The spell in Medusa's gaze

Oxidized skin

The world is populated by alchemical machines

The threshold

Dancing in space

Totems and masks

Barulé

Ten human spaces enclosed in a case

Biography
edited by Marisol Costa