Self-taught Italian artist who remained active, especially in painting. Soon after having begun painting, Manzoni questioned the traditional aims and methods of the artist, expressing the nature of the question both in writing as well as in the objects he created. Despite having known the work of Yves Klein since 1957 and, apparently, having been extremely impressed by it, Manzoni's work is clearly distinct from the monochromatic works of Klein: the desire to create a space destitute of any trace of colour, mark or material. At the beginning of 1958, he met the Zero group artists in Düsseldorf and began questioning the nature of an object of art in works prefiguring Conceptual Art. In the final years of his career, he produced his most monumental work, Socle of the World, a block of iron installed in the Sculpture Park in Angligarden in Denmark, supposedly to serve as a "base of the world". Manzoni's aim was to develop connections between art, the artist and the individual. In order to achieve this, he was frequently provocative.
