biography

Simone Forti was born in Florence (Italy) in 1935. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Forti has been a leading figure in the development of contemporary performance over the last fifty years. Artist, choreographer, dancer, writer, Forti has dedicated herself to the research of a kinesthetic awareness, always engaging with experimentation and improvisation. Investigating the relationship between object and body, through animal studies, news animations and land portraits, she reconfigured the concept of performance and dance. Forti emigrated from Italy with her family via Switzerland to Los Angeles in 1938, where she subsequently studied for four years with coreographer Anna Halprin and has since spent most of her life. She joined the experimental downtown art scene in New York during the emergence of performance art, process-based work and Minimal Art and spent a fruitful time in Rome in the late ‘60s, where she used the spaces of L’Attico to study and perform. Her work is seen as a precursor of the famous Judson Dance Theater – a group of artists experimenting with dance, including Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer – and Minimal Art, although she prefers to be referred simply as a “movement artist”.

Forti has worked with artists like Dan Graham and Robert Whitman and composers like Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, and La Monte Young. In the past few years younger artists have reached out to collaborate with her, further indication of the great significance of Simone Forti’s work for artists today.

Simone Forti is the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Danza 2023.

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Simone Forti was born in Florence (Italy) in 1935. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Forti has been a leading figure in the development of contemporary performance over the last fifty years. Artist, choreographer, dancer, writer, Forti has dedicated herself to the research of a kinesthetic awareness, always engaging with experimentation and improvisation. Investigating the relationship between object and body, through animal studies, news animations and land portraits, she reconfigured the concept of performance and dance. Forti emigrated from Italy with her family via Switzerland to Los Angeles in 1938, where she subsequently studied for four years with coreographer Anna Halprin and has since spent most of her life. She joined the experimental downtown art scene in New York during the emergence of performance art, process-based work and Minimal Art and spent a fruitful time in Rome in the late ‘60s, where she used the spaces of L’Attico to study and perform. Her work is seen as a precursor of the famous Judson Dance Theater – a group of artists experimenting with dance, including Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer – and Minimal Art, although she prefers to be referred simply as a “movement artist”.

Forti has worked with artists like Dan Graham and Robert Whitman and composers like Charlemagne Palestine, Peter Van Riper, and La Monte Young. In the past few years younger artists have reached out to collaborate with her, further indication of the great significance of Simone Forti’s work for artists today.

Simone Forti is the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of the Biennale Danza 2023.

Select institutions that have hosted solo exhibitions and performances by Simone Forti include: Simone Forti, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles (2023); Simone Forti. Senza Fretta, Centro Pecci, Prato (2021); Vicino al Cuore, ICA Milano, Milan (2019); Simone Forti, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2019); Simone Forti: Here It Comes. Works and Collaborations, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2015); Louvre Museum, Paris (2014); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2013); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2013); The High Line, New York (2012); Galleria L’Attico, Rome (2009); Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2004); Musée d’art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneve, (2003); Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris (2002); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (1999); Fundacao Serralves Museum, Porto (1999); P.S.1, New York (1983, 1977, 1976); Kunsthalle, Basel (1979); Sonnabend Gallery, New York (1978, 1974), San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco (1977); Yoko Ono Studio, New York (1969, 1961); Merce Cunningham Studio, New York (1961).

Her work has been included in group exhibitions such as: Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2018, 2014, 2013, 2009, 1979, 1978); Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015, 2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015, 2011); Guggenheim Museum, New York (2013); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2011); Hayward Gallery, London (2010); Galleria L’Attico, Rome (1972, 1969, 1968).

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images

News Animation - Things?, 2012

Pencil, marker on paper

61 × 45,5 cm; 63,7 × 48,4 × 4 cm framed

News Animation - Ecol Econ Ogy Omy, 2012

Pen, pencil, colored pencil on paper

61 × 45,5 cm; 63,7 × 48,4 × 4 cm framed

Animal Studies

Animal Study - Oxen, Turkey, Ostrich, 1982

Set of 4 drawings

Ink on paper

27 × 31,2 × 3,8 cm framed, each

Rubbings, 2015

Graphite on paper

49,5 × 41,9 × 4,4 cm framed

Rubbings, 2015

Graphite on paper

49,5 × 41,9 × 4,4 cm framed

Illuminations, 1972

Set of 2 drawings

Ink on paper

27,9 × 21,6 cm, each

Baby, 1966

Watercolor on paper (set of 2)

35,6 × 43,2 cm; 22,9 × 30,5 cm

Videos

Weeding: Steve and Lisa’s Garden 1, 2019

Video

18' 03"

A Free Consultation, 2016

HD video

17' 35"

Zuma News, 2014

Video

12' 37"

Flag in the Water, 2014

Video

19' 46"

News Animation: The Getty Center, 2004

Video

10' 14"

News Animation: Mad Brook Farm, 1986

Video

21' 14" loop

public exhibitions

MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art

Los Angeles

Simone Forti

15.1 – 2.4.2023

Photo: Jeff McLane

Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci

Prato, Italy

Simone Forti. Senza Fretta

19.6 – 5.9.2021

Photo: Ela Bialkowska, OKNOstudio.

Palazzo delle Esposizioni

Rome, Italy

FUORI.

30.10.2020 – 18.7.2021

Courtesy Fondazione La Quadriennale di Roma. Photo: DSL Studio

ICA Milano

Milan

Simone Forti. Vicino al Cuore / Close to the Heart

29.11.2019 – 2.2.2020

Curated by Chiara Nuzzi and Alberto Salvadori. Photo: Filippo Armellin

Kunsthaus Baselland

Basel

Simone Forti

17.5 – 7.7.2019

Photo: Gina Folly

Walker Art Centre

Minneapolis

The Body Electric

30.3 – 21.7.2019

Photo: Bobby Rogers. Courtesy: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

The Museum of Modern Art

New York

Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done

16.9.2018 – 3.2.2019

Performers, from left: Laura Pfeffer, Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera, Samuel Hanson. Photo: Paula Court

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

New York

Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955 - 1972

24.5 – 16.9.2017

Photo: Jonathan Blanc/The New York Public Library

press

Windows on the world

Claudia La Rocco

Artforum

Summer 2023

Simone Forti

Marta Silvi

Artforum

May 2023

15 Minutes with Simone Forti and Peter Frank

Peter Frank

Los Angeles Magazine

March 16, 2023

Simone Forti Finds the Dancer Within Us

Renée Reizman

Hyperallergic

March 13, 2023

Ogni piccolo gesto è una danza

Valeria Crippa

La Lettura

March 5, 2023

Simone Forti’s Experiments Transcribing Bodies in Motion

MOCA, Los Angeles

Jori Finkel

The New York Times

February 8, 2023

On Simone Forti’s Huddle (1961)

Luca Lo Pinto

Spike Art Magazine

Winter 2022-2023

Fisicità del concetto, astrazione del corpo

Centro Pecci

Mario Francesco Simeone

Exibart

June 18, 2021

Capisco il mondo, a modo mio

Patrick Steffen

Flash Art Italia

Fall 2021

Simone Forti’s Bag Drawings

MoMA

Ana Javenski

MoMA Magazine

July 30, 2020

Simone Forti è l'artista del movimento e dell'improvvisazione

Marco Arrigoni

Harper's Bazaar Italia

August 17, 2020

Intorno al corpo

ICA Milano dedica una mostra a Simone Forti Coreografa e artista visiva fuori dagli schemi

Silvia Icardi

Corriere della Sera

December 2, 2019

Simone Forti

Galleria Raffaella Cortese | Via Stradella 7

Francesca Pola

Artforum

January 2019

The Judson Dance Theater Comes Alive at MoMA

Russel Janzen

Frieze

October 16, 2018

Simone Forti by Tashi Wada​

Interview

Tisha Wada

Bomb

September 18, 2018

An Interview with Simone Forti

Barbara Browing

The Paris Review

May 4, 2018

Phantom Limbs

Solveig Nelson

Artforum

September, 2018

Interview with Simone Forti

Ross Simonini

Art Review

December, 2018

Conversation with Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer

Simon Leung

X-TRA

Autumn, 2018

Artists at Work: Simone Forti

Bryony Gillard, Louis Hartnoll

Afterall

June 6, 2016

The Sensation of Un-thought Thoughts

Caroline Picard

Art 21

March 1, 2016

A Conversation on the Aesthetics of Improvisation and Some Other Things

Rossella Mazzaglia

Danza e ricerca. Laboratorio di studi, scritture, visioni

November, 2015

Simone Forti

Museum der Moderne

Sabine Weingartner

Frieze

November 14, 2014

Los Angeles Talk

Barbara T. Smith

Mousse Magazine

Summer 2010

publications

Oh, Tongue

Simone Forti, Luca Lo Pinto, Fred Dewey, Jackson Mac Low

Nero Editions

Rome

2023

L'orso allo specchio

Simone Forti

Kunstverein Publishing and Vleeshal

Milan

2020

The Bear in The Mirror

Simone Forti

Buchhandlung Walther König

Köln

2018

Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done

Ana Janevski and Thomas J. Lax

The Museum of Modern Art

New York

2018

Soft is Fast – Simone Forti in the 1960s and After

Meredith Morse

MIT Press

Cambridge, MA

2016

Simone Forti: Thinking with the Body

Edited by Sabine Breitwieser

Hirmer Verlag

Munich

2014

Danser sa vie

Edited by Christine Macel and Emma Lavigne

Centre Pompidou

Paris

2011

video


Simone Forti's Huddle in the Neue Nationalgalerie

2022


Al Di Là: An Evening of Sound Works by Simone Forti

2020

Produced by Tashi Wada. Performed by Simone Forti, Tashi Wada, Julia Holter, Jessika Kenney, and Corey Fogel. Saturday, February 1, 2020. REDCAT, Los Angeles, California. Video by Ignacio Genzon and Robert Nachmann


Virtual Studio Visits: Klaus Biesenbach in Conversation with Simone Forti

2020

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles January 16, 2021

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