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The work of art has its origin in an unconscious impulse that springs from collective substrata of universal values common to all men, from which all men draw their gestures, and from which the artist derives the 'archaic' of organic existence. Every man of his own accord extracts the human element from this base, without realizing it, and in an elementary and immediate way.

— Piero Manzoni

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More quotes by Piero Manzoni

I would like to draw a white line covering the complete Greenwich meridian.

I sell an idea, an idea in a can.

You [=Yves Klein ] are the 'monochrome bleu' and I am the 'monochrome blanc'; we should start to cooperate together, we two. [Manzoni's remark, during their first meeting]

When I blow up a balloon, I am breathing my soul into an object that becomes eternal. [Manzoni's quote of 1960, referring to his art-work 'Artist's Breath']

..a single uninterrupted and continuous surface from which anything superfluous and all interpretative possibilities are excluded. [referring to his 'Achromes', Manzoni started to make in 1957]

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Piero Manzoni (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.