Michelangelo Pistoletto: the artist with a smashing way to save the world

Pistoletto shook up the 60s with his arte povera revolution. What's the legendary mirror-smasher doing now? Designing houses made of rice at his eco HQ

How many years' bad luck is this? Artist Michelangelo Pistoletto smashes mirrors with a sledgehammer video

It's a Thursday lunchtime and Michelangelo Pistoletto's cafe is buzzing. All around me, people are chatting, eating and laughing as they sit at wooden tables in this stylishly stripped-back space. Pistoletto, one of the most celebrated artists in Europe, has joined me for antipasti, along with his wife Maria and, for some reason, their very entertaining dentist, who is telling me how he got a free delivery of berries yesterday after helping an old man who had got lost in the street.

Pistoletto, a visionary figure who believes artists have a mission to change the world, jokes that our antipasti are tantamount to arte povera food their simple and honest ingredients reflecting the philosophies of the revolutionary artistic and social movement he launched way back in the 1960s. I tuck into my roasted carrots, stuffed courgettes and octopus, washing it all down with a good Piedmont wine. If this is utopianism, bring me more. And look! Here comes the panna cotta.

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