At the outset of his career in Genoa, Germano Celant was cited by colleagues as a critic on his way to becoming a major curator and art historian. This was in 1967. Anyone familiar with this eager 27-year-old writer understood Celant as an ambitious critic, a polemical critic, who in addition to writing regularly for the art and design magazine, Marcatre, was possessed by the idea of changing the direction of art.

This was the year he opened a group exhibition. titled Im Spazio (The Space of Thought), at the Galleria La Bertesca (Genoa), devoted to a group of mostly unrecognized Italian artists, who would become known collectively as Arte Povera.