NAPOLI.- Intesa Sanpaolois now presenting Mario Schifano: il nuovo immaginario. 1960-1990 [The new imaginary. 1960-1990], a survey exhibition dedicated to one of the most important 20th-century Italian artists. The exhibition will be on view at the Intesa Sanpaolo Museum Gallerie d’Italia in Naples, from 2 June to 29 October 2023.
Curated by Luca Massimo Barbero, the exhibition presents more than 50 works from the artist’s production from the 1960s to the 1990s. Many of the works in the exhibition form part of Intesa Sanpaolo’s collection, while others are loans from important cultural institutions, such as the Museo del Novecento in Milan, and national and international art galleries and private collections, selected in collaboration with the Mario Schifano Archive.
Mario Schifano began his career in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At first, his research led him to focus on the production of dense, monochromatic paintings, which most probably derived from his experience as a restorer in the museum of Etruscan art and archaeological artefacts, where his father had convinced him to work. The dense black of the ancient, Etruscan vases inspired the young artist to such an extent that all of his most significant paintings of the period are influenced - in the framing, the perspective, details - by those antiquities. The exhibition itinerary at the Gallerie d'Italia in Naples starts from these extremely rare monochrome works from Schifano’s early period, some of which, once included in the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection, are now part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group’s collection. This exhibition marks the first time that these early monochromes are brought together, allowing visitors to encounter the work Grande pittura (1963) and other iconic paintings dedicated to Esso, Coca Cola and various urban brands that reveal the artist’s interest in signs and labels in the early 1960’s.
The exhibition aims to present all the masterpieces by Schifano addressing the most central and relevant themes of his artistic research and practice, this way unfolding, room by room, as an in-depth analysis of the artist’s production. The presentation offers an unprecedented opportunity to experience the famous paintings dedicated to Italian landscapes such as Ultimo Autunno (1964), a fundamental work by Schifano, as well as Futurismo rivisitato, a small format work, both forming part of the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection. Futurismo Rivisitato was dedicated to the masters like Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and Carlo Carrà, who had been studying the movement of the human figure.
At the end of the first section of the exhibition, visitors will encounter some of the major works of the mature period, such as Compagni Compagni and Tableau peint pour raconter l’inquietude amoreuse de Susi. These works will open the path to a section entirely devoted to Paesaggi TV (literally, TV Landscapes).
For the first time, a series of works from the 1970s titled Paesaggi TV is exhibited and made accessible to the general public: creations that, by revisiting painting through the use of the camera and the emulsion of colours, re-propose news, art and advertising events on canvas. A series of images is captured by the artist directly from the cathode ray tube, and impressed on the canvas’ surface. The result is a series of surreal television screens, most of which portray the phantasmic versions of his masters’ -Giorgio De Chirico, Leonardo Da Vinci and Pablo Picasso- most famous paintings.
On the ground floor, within Gallerie d’Italia’s Salone Toledo, the large-scale work Festa Cinese (1968), more than seven metres across, is showcased alongside a constellation of works from the last three decades of Mario Schifano's artistic production, before his death in 1998. Among the extra large-format paintings that are part of the exhibition, visitors will encounter emblematic works such as Gaston a cavallo (1986), two of the important Gigli d’acqua e Acerbo and three large, more contemporary canvases manifesting Mario Schifano’s fond interest towards the screen, the mass media and the contemporary production of images. These last works from the 1990s are intentionally displayed here as to give emphasis on their monumentality, which comes after a particular event occurred in the artist’s life and that is still decipherable in some fragments of this series of paintings, such as in the work Per esempio that is part of the exhibition. These challenging works crystallize Mario Schifano's fertile creativity in the mature period. Not surprisingly, the critics used to define such colossal yet festive series of works as the extraordinary canvases of international contemporary art.
The exhibition catalogue is produced by Edizioni Gallerie d'Italia | Skira.
Along with Gallerie d’Italia in Milan, Turin and Vicenza, Gallerie d’Italia in Naples is part of Intesa Sanpaolo’s museum project, led by Michele Coppola, Executive Director of Art, Culture and Historical Heritage at the Bank.
