Arte Povera (literally poor art) is a modern art movement. The term was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. Artists began attacking the values of established institutions of government, industry, and culture, and even questioning whether art as the private expression of the individual still had an ethical reason to exist. Italian art critic Germano Celant organized two exhibitions in 1967 and 1968, followed by an influential book published by Electa in 1985 called Arte Povera Storie e protagonisti/Arte Povera. Histories and Protagonists, promoting the notion of a revolutionary art, free of convention, the power of structure, and the market place. Although Celant attempted to encompass the radical elements of the entire international scene, the term properly centered on a group of Italian artists who attacked the corporate mentality with an art of unconventional materials and style. They often used found objects in their works. Other early exponents of radical change in the visual arts include proto Arte Povera artists: Antoni Tàpies and the Dau al Set movement, Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, and Lucio Fontana and Spatialism.

Arte (Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne) is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts. Its facilities are located in Issy-les-Moulineaux, South of Paris and Strasbourg (headquarters) in France and Baden-Baden in Germany.

Because it is an international joint venture (an EEIG), programs cater technically to audiences from both countries. This implies double-titling, opposite-language subtitling and dubbing, hosts speaking both languages alternately and generally two separate audio tracks (available through DVB-T, satellite television and digital cable).

Arte began transmission in 1992, filling frequencies left unused by the demise of La Cinq, the first French commercial television network (created in 1986).

Programs are created by Arte France formerly known as La Sept (theoretically La Société d'édition des programmes de télévision, but also a play on words, given that the name intuitively means the seventh network and indeed La Sept existed while the fifth network was still La Cinq; it made satellite television programs at the time) and by ARTE Deutschland GmbH, a subsidiary of the two main public German TV networks ARD and ZDF.

Pino Pascali (Bari, 19 October 1935 – Rome, 11 September 1968) was an Italian artist, sculptor, set designer and performer.

Pino Pascali was born in Bari, Italy in 1936 and moved to Rome in 1955 to learn scene painting and set design at the Academy of Art. Pascali worked as an advertisement illustrator and designer for a number of years before his first solo exhibition in 1965 at the Galleria La Tartaruga.

Pascali showed his "fake sculptures," a series of shaped-canvases that first appear to be solid sculptures but are actually paintings that present abstract forms suggesting animals, plants and landscapes. Soon after, Pascali created his "weapon series," which is perhaps his most famous group of works. Assembled from found materials and painted olive-green, it faithfully recreates every detail of the weapon it mimics. However, as the weapon cannot fire or kill, it becomes an innocent, oversized toy.

Opposite to the "weapon series" in appearance, Pascali presented organic forms in a dream-like universe that, like the "fake sculptures," play on the relationship between illusion and reality.

Jannis Kounellis was born on March 23, 1936 in Piraeus, Greece. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.

In 1963, the artist introduced found objects in his paintings, among them live animals but also fire, earth, burlap sacks, gold. He replaced the canvas with bed frames, doorways, windows or simply the gallery itself. In 1967, Kounellis joined the Arte Povera movement of Germano Celant. In 1969, he exhibited real horses in the galleria l’Attico. Gradually, Kounellis introduced new materials in his installations (propane torches, smoke, coal, meat, ground coffee, lead, found wooden objects, etc.). The gallery environment was replaced with historical (mostly industrial) sites.

October 2009 finds many Kounellis' works presented in various sections of Tate Modern Gallery in London, UK. On the 5th floor, there is a room dedicated to his work. Jonathan Jones of the Guardian newspaper notes : "dry-stone walling, sacks of grain and rice, and a painting that includes part of the score of St John Passion by JS Bach bring a sense of real life, organic and ancient, into the museum. Like the Kiefer installation, this is another of the Artist Rooms acquired from the collection of Anthony d'Offay." On the 3rd floor, one of his works is matched with that of an Italian artist of the same artistic movement.