The Show on Mario Schifano: the New Imaginary 1960 -1990
Mario Schifano: the New Imaginary 1960-1990 is an important exhibition curated by Luca Massimo Barbero for the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection on display now in Naples at the prestigious Gallerie d’Italia, the museum of Intesa Sanpaolo.
The show’s high level is reflected by the caliber of the lending institutions, which include the Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice (external link), the Novecento Museum in Milan, and the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection itself.
The collaboration with the Mario Schifano Archive is also significant.
Mario Schifano (Homs, Libya 1934 – Rome 1998) went from working as a restorer in the Villa Giulia Etruscan Museum to being an international Pop Art icon – an amazing trajectory in the history of modern art.
Monochromes
The abstract monochromes from the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection, now part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group, are early works by Mario Schifano and typical of his style in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mario Schifano, advertising brands and Italian Pop Art
Some of his most famous works are from the first half of the 1960s like the ones in which he gave new faces to famous brands like Esso and Coca-Cola, the works entitled “Signs of Energy” that came on the wave of American Pop Art but are decidedly Italian.
Grande pittura
That was also when he made original works like Grande Pittura (Great Painting) of 1963 and others inspired by urban signs.
Futurism revisited
This beautiful exhibition Mario Schifano: the New Imaginary 1960-1990 includes his great classic: “Futurism Revisited”,inspired by the famous photo taken in Paris in 1912 with Carlo Carrà, Gino Severini, Umberto Boccioni, Luigi Russolo, and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
Schifano depicted the subject many times using various colors and techniques.
Mario Schifano and Giacomo Balla’s Bedroom
Where did Mario Schifano get his idea for Futurism Rivisted, a work sought after by collectors in Italy and abroad?
In 1963, the artist Claes Thure Oldenburg presented Bedroom Ensemble at the National Gallery of Canada. In 1965, Plinio De Martiis, owner of Galleria La Tartaruga and “deus ex machina,” as Giosetta Fioroni called him , opened the show Balla’s Bedroom in Rome.
De Martiis had heard that Futurist Giacomo Balla had commissioned a bedroom from a furniture factory that he had customized with his own Iridescent Interpenetrations, so the gallerist decided to stake Italian Pop Art on him by presenting these everyday objects.
Mario Schifano’s series “Futurism Revisited in Color”
As a big fan of Giacomo Balla and enthusiastic about the show, Mario Schifano created the series Futurism Revisited in Color after returning from New York the same year. We have a version from this series at Egidi Made in Italy – check it out!
TV Landscapes
Mario Schifano’s talents were revealed by another of his great foresights in the 1970s when he anticipated the power and invasion of ubiquitous everyday images.
Taking his own inspired, hallucinatory approach he produced a beautiful series called TV Landscapes
by closing himself inside a room with dozens of TV screens always on and transferring the TV images onto canvas.
The last works in the Salone Toledo in Naples are as boundless as his talent: Festa Cinese (Chinese Festival), Gigli d’acqua (Water Lilies), and Acerbo (Unripe) from the Tonelli Collection in Terni.
The large painting of Gaston a cavallo (Gaston on Horseback), from the prestigious Emilio Mazzoli Collection in Modena, is also beautiful.
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