Preventive Peace Flags

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto is one of the most influential artists of the postwar era and a central figure in the development of contemporary art. Emerging in the early 1960s with his groundbreaking Mirror Paintings, Pistoletto transformed the relationship between artwork, viewer and environment by incorporating polished reflective surfaces that bring the present moment directly into the image. In doing so, he dissolved the boundary between art and life, establishing participation, responsibility and collective awareness as defining principles of his practice.

A leading protagonist of Arte Povera, the influential Italian movement that emerged during the late 1960s, Pistoletto expanded the possibilities of artistic practice beyond the studio and museum. Across more than six decades, he has consistently positioned art as an active force within society, creating works that connect creativity with education, politics, economics, spirituality and civic life. This vision found institutional form in 1998 with the establishment of Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte in Biella, a laboratory for social transformation dedicated to placing art in dialogue with every sphere of human activity.

Central to Pistoletto’s thinking is The Third Paradise, a symbol and philosophy introduced in 2003 that has become one of the most widely recognised artistic propositions of the twenty-first century. Represented by a reconfigured infinity sign, the symbol proposes a new balance between seemingly opposing forces: nature and artificiality, individual and collective, freedom and responsibility. At its centre lies a third space in which difference becomes a source of creation rather than conflict. Over the past two decades, The Third Paradise has evolved into a global participatory project engaging communities, institutions and governments in a shared reflection on how society might create a more sustainable and peaceful future.

In 2026, Pistoletto collaborated with CIRCA on a year-long global initiative dedicated to Preventive Peace, presented in partnership with Fondazione Pistoletto Cittadellarte and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Launching across CIRCA’s international network of screens, Three Mirrors (2026) brought together three new moving-image works: Third Paradise, Formula of Creation and Statodellarte. Filmed at Cittadellarte in Biella and curated by Josef O’Connor, the trilogy saw Pistoletto drawing directly onto large mirrored surfaces, transforming the screen into what he described as a shared space of awareness and responsibility.

Broadcast daily at 20:26 across London, Milan, Rome, Los Angeles, Accra, Abidjan, Lagos, Johannesburg, Hong Kong and Seoul, Three Mirrors functioned as a series of public lectures without walls, extending Pistoletto’s longstanding belief that art should address society directly rather than remain confined to traditional cultural institutions. The project culminated in a public gathering in Piazza del Duomo during Salone del Mobile, where participants assembled to recreate the symbol of the Third Paradise as a collective act of reflection and civic engagement.

The collaboration also introduced Preventive Peace Flags, a series of twelve mirrored editions that translated the central ideas of Three Mirrors into participatory objects. Through their reflective surfaces, the works extended the logic of the Mirror Paintings, incorporating viewers and their surroundings into an ongoing equation of shared responsibility.

Awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2003, the Wolf Foundation Prize in Arts in 2007 and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, Pistoletto remains one of the rare artists whose influence extends beyond contemporary art into wider conversations surrounding social transformation, education, citizenship and peace. Throughout his career, he has advanced a simple yet radical proposition: that creativity is not merely a cultural activity, but a civic responsibility capable of shaping the future of society itself.