Eric Dini, a Senior Project Manager at our Door Division, snapped this colorful photo when visiting an art museum while vacationing in Italy. It depicts Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Art Signs, which are sculptures formed by the intersection of two triangles representing a human body, its arms raised and legs spread.
Pistoletto’s Art Signs
Eric regularly specifies rectangular doors and frames, made of many different materials, mainly in black, or shades of grey or brown. He was attracted to Pistoletto’s brightly-colored, non-rectangular doors and frames, and to their significance representing the human body.
The artist calls these doorways ‘Art Signs.’
Pistoletto’s Art Sign is a figure formed by the intersection of two triangles representing a human body, its arms raised and legs spread. With this shape, the greatest extension of the artist’s body, Pistoletto created many works in different materials, such as doors, windows, garbage cans, etc. The side of the door facing the center is covered by a mirror, while on the other side are written the words “Love Difference” in eight different languages.
“Normally, tradition imposes the same sign on everything, be it a religious sign, a political sign, an advertising emblem, or a product brand. Signs invade our world, but only artists have created personal signs. Now it is time for others, too, to take responsibility for themselves… Everyone with a sign of their own has the key to the door which open onto art, a door that leads to a reserved, intimate, personal space as well as to the space where social meetings take place.”
Michelangelo Pistoletto
Michelangelo Pistoletto is an Italian painter, sculptor and art theorist, born in 1933. He is one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera. His work mainly deals with the subject matter of reflection and the unification of art and everyday life. Arte povera means literally ‘poor art’ but the word poor here refers to the movement’s signature exploration of a wide range of materials beyond the traditional ones of oil paint on canvas, bronze, or carved marble.
Pistoletto is quoted in an online interview, saying, “Art and life meet and merge, each retaining its identity; at the same time, in this case, life leads art through the passages leading to the different fields of the social structure.”
Doors and doorways, documented across cultures as long as history has been recorded, symbolize both entrances and exits. Thus, they are associated with portals and passageways, gates, thresholds and time. In Pistoletto’s Art signs, doorways connect art and life itself.
Eric is a talented, artistic photographer who captured the photo of the silent city during the pandemic, featured on the left below. He took the reflective photo of the Door Division exterior and is shown on the right in our Door Division warehouse.
 Silent City |  Anderson Lock Door Division |  Eric Dini |