This book is published on the occasion of the exhibition held at the Fondazione Merz in Turin from April 27th to July 29th, 2007. This book focuses more particularly on the works exhibited at the Fondazione Merz: it presents works since 1954, illustrating 300 drawings by Mario Merz. The majority of the artist’s sketches have never before been published and there has been little theoretical attempt to understand this crucial aspect of his career. For him, with the exception of writing, drawing was the only medium to accompany life, at home and on one’s travels, not only because it requires little in the way of materials and can be done anywhere and everywhere, but because drawing can match our mental and physical movements, since encounters and shocks are all recorded seismographically, as Merz has shown – singing birds, falling leaves, traffic noise: “All these things entered into the drawing, without directly entering it, but they entered into it as time, in the act of registration, as though the pencil were the tip of one of those instruments that record things on sheets of paper”. (Mario Merz)

This book illustrates from the series of drawings on Objet cache-toi (Object, hide yourself) to the themes of the tables, cups and groups dedicated to the Giardino dei gufi (Garden of the owls), Semi floreali volanti (Flying flower seeds) and the Disegni di Sidney (Sydney drawings), as well as the large works depicting the prehistoric “terrible animals”.

The book includes an essay by Dieter Schwarz (Director of Kunstmuseum in Winterthur), Claire Gilman and a selected chronology by Lara Conte.