The prankster art of Maurizio Cattelan

After a dramatic departure from the art world two years ago, the artist and prankster Maurizio Cattelan is back with a new exhibition in Moscow. Mystification of the Provincial Idiot at S’ART (Petr Vois Gallery) features many of the artist’s most iconic artworks including The Ninth Hour (1999), a satirical sculpture of Pope John II struck to the ground by a meteor and surrounded by shattered glass. Other works include Him (2001), a statue of Adolf Hitler praying on his knees, and The Ballad of Trotsky (1996), a taxidermised horse suspended in the air, which sold for $2.1m in a 2004 New York auction.

The artist, who is known as much for his extreme pranks as for his harsh criticism of the art world, announced he would be retiring on the eve of a retrospective at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2011. At first, the announcement appeared to be yet another hoax from the provocative Italian artist who once taped his gallerist Massimo de Carlo to a wall during a performance in Milan in 1999.

Speaking to The Art Newspaper that year, he said: “This will be my first and last retrospective, at least in the sense of an exhibition that I have personally had a hand in … There are already more [projects] in the pipeline but I won’t be directly involved. I will just pretend that I’m dead.” However, Cattelan has since revealed he will be coming out of retirement to present an exhibition of new works at The Beyeler Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, from 8 June to 6 October.

Cattelan, who started his career as a furniture designer in the Eighties, now lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited in major galleries around the world including Centre Georges Pompidou, Kunsthalle Basel, New York’s MoMA, London’s Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The exhibition runs until 1 September.