Setting out from the manifesto written in 1968, Casa ideale explores the poetic reach of Pier Paolo Calzolari’s work: a programmatic text that was to become a vehicle for a series of ideas that endowed the artist’s practice with direction, clearly outlining his intentions and evoking a range of interpretative possibilities. Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the NMNM – Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, the volume offers a wide-ranging overview on his research, retracing the key moments of a career that touched on the mainstays of Arte Povera as well as those of conceptual art. Through reproductions of historic works and performances, a new series of unpublished drawings and a collection of texts commissioned especially for the occasion, the book provides a rare opportunity to discover the world of Pier Paolo Calzolari, known for his unconventional approaches to the various disciplines of the visual arts. By constructing a process of metaphysical abstraction, Calzolari puts together a plural work, capable of combining various formal languages and triggering a transition between the physical and the aesthetic dimensions.