Germano Celant, the towering Italian critic, curator, and scholar whose wide-ranging interpretations and exhibitions altered the trajectory of contemporary art and made him a leading voice in the field, has died in Milan at eighty years old due to complications from Covid-19. The author of hundreds of books, essays, and articles that coincided with as many large-scale exhibitions, Celant is most closely affiliated with arte povera, a term he coined in 1967 for the association of Italian avant-garde artists who made meaning from mundane materials and challenged the role of art itself.

(via Artforum)