MarioSCHIFANO
Mario Schifano. TUTTO on paper...
09.2023–11.2023
Mario Schifano. TUTTO on paper...
09.2023–11.2023
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MARIO SCHIFANO TUTTO nelle carte… Curated by Alberto Salvadori 22.09. – 04.11.2023 Installation view Fondazione Marconi, Milan Photo: Fabio Mantegna
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Mario Schifano
Tuttestelle, 1967
Enamel, pencil and spray paint on paper
126 x 70 cm
Tuttestelle, 1967
Enamel, pencil and spray paint on paper
126 x 70 cm
Press Release
Mario Schifano
TUTTO on paper...
Curated by Alberto Salvadori
Opening: Thursday, 21 September 2023, 6pm-9pm
22 September – 4 November 2023
Tuesday – Saturday; 11am – 6pm
TUTTO on paper...
Curated by Alberto Salvadori
Opening: Thursday, 21 September 2023, 6pm-9pm
22 September – 4 November 2023
Tuesday – Saturday; 11am – 6pm
Fondazione Marconi and Gió Marconi are pleased to announce Mario Schifano TUTTO nelle carte... [TUTTO on Paper…], a major retrospective curated by Alberto Salvadori, with the support of the Archivio Mario Schifano.
The exhibition aims to shed light on Mario Schifano’s extensive and varied production of works on paper throughout the 1960s. It features a selection of works on paper that retraces the best-known cycles that the artist was concurrently also creating on canvas, beginning with the Monocromi and ending with the Compagni compagni series.
Mario Schifano’s work and personal journey were intense and never separate. His works on paper represent an important and extensive production. The selection on display at the gallery demonstrates that throughout the decade of the 1960s, for Mario Schifano art was everything, TUTTO: art that evolves and revolves around the subject, reality, and a new mindful consciousness in relation to the city, human space, life and emotions. In the same manner as his paintings, Schifano's works on paper provide vivid evidence of how everything influenced his way of seeing and thinking: films, signage, advertising, politics, his personal love stories and friendships. Schifano instinctively understood that art is life and vice versa. Right from the start he differentiated himself from the American phenomena of pop art and new dada, and from everyone else for the rest of his career. His artworks on paper are the geographical map of his way of thinking and his practice.
Works on paper occupy an important place in Schifano’s oeuvre and are essential to a comparative interpretation of his entire production, both in terms of their relationship with the paintings and their expressive language.
From the early years of the monochromes which contain and re-elaborate street art and the language of pop culture - pop, not in terms of pop art, but rather as the popular language of sign painters - up until the emulsion canvases, paper was always present as the constant for any idea that intersected the moment. In Schifano’s world, images can no longer be analyzed and interpreted in a familiar way. The traditional relationships of composition vanish, leaving room for myriad possibilities, which the artist selects and uses as an inevitable step in his process. Whatever is taken for granted in pictorial or photographic terms evaporates in Schifano’s work: he confronts us with a new way of looking at reality and invention, which in his work becomes manipulation through painting, regardless of the support. Schifano’s work during the 1960s compels us to analyze the functions and use of social roles and cultural and political contexts. It also raises the question about the new fields of creation. His work is a philosophical exercise linked to the experience of life; a call for the analysis of real and widespread behavioral modes as an antithesis to elitist or specialistic ones. In his work - which is ultimately biographical - Schifano seemingly plays with centralising, authoritarian connotations, only to suddenly reveal the contrary: an open, voluntary and participatory system of art.
Ontology is opposed to use, authorship to accessibility and participation, appropriation to adoption, and creativity to the attribution of meaning. Everything is there to be selected and shared. From an archive in the making, composed of the bulk of painted and drawn papers and the claim of totality, one moves to the next phase of pictorial collation which is an exercise in distinguishing, rummaging, selecting and recycling. Schifano is empirical and experimental; he craves for the world that presents itself before him and transforms everything into pure painting. It does not have to be on canvas, it can also be on paper.
The exhibition aims to shed light on Mario Schifano’s extensive and varied production of works on paper throughout the 1960s. It features a selection of works on paper that retraces the best-known cycles that the artist was concurrently also creating on canvas, beginning with the Monocromi and ending with the Compagni compagni series.
Mario Schifano’s work and personal journey were intense and never separate. His works on paper represent an important and extensive production. The selection on display at the gallery demonstrates that throughout the decade of the 1960s, for Mario Schifano art was everything, TUTTO: art that evolves and revolves around the subject, reality, and a new mindful consciousness in relation to the city, human space, life and emotions. In the same manner as his paintings, Schifano's works on paper provide vivid evidence of how everything influenced his way of seeing and thinking: films, signage, advertising, politics, his personal love stories and friendships. Schifano instinctively understood that art is life and vice versa. Right from the start he differentiated himself from the American phenomena of pop art and new dada, and from everyone else for the rest of his career. His artworks on paper are the geographical map of his way of thinking and his practice.
Works on paper occupy an important place in Schifano’s oeuvre and are essential to a comparative interpretation of his entire production, both in terms of their relationship with the paintings and their expressive language.
From the early years of the monochromes which contain and re-elaborate street art and the language of pop culture - pop, not in terms of pop art, but rather as the popular language of sign painters - up until the emulsion canvases, paper was always present as the constant for any idea that intersected the moment. In Schifano’s world, images can no longer be analyzed and interpreted in a familiar way. The traditional relationships of composition vanish, leaving room for myriad possibilities, which the artist selects and uses as an inevitable step in his process. Whatever is taken for granted in pictorial or photographic terms evaporates in Schifano’s work: he confronts us with a new way of looking at reality and invention, which in his work becomes manipulation through painting, regardless of the support. Schifano’s work during the 1960s compels us to analyze the functions and use of social roles and cultural and political contexts. It also raises the question about the new fields of creation. His work is a philosophical exercise linked to the experience of life; a call for the analysis of real and widespread behavioral modes as an antithesis to elitist or specialistic ones. In his work - which is ultimately biographical - Schifano seemingly plays with centralising, authoritarian connotations, only to suddenly reveal the contrary: an open, voluntary and participatory system of art.
Ontology is opposed to use, authorship to accessibility and participation, appropriation to adoption, and creativity to the attribution of meaning. Everything is there to be selected and shared. From an archive in the making, composed of the bulk of painted and drawn papers and the claim of totality, one moves to the next phase of pictorial collation which is an exercise in distinguishing, rummaging, selecting and recycling. Schifano is empirical and experimental; he craves for the world that presents itself before him and transforms everything into pure painting. It does not have to be on canvas, it can also be on paper.
Biographical notes
Born in Homs, Libya, in 1934, Mario Schifano moved to Rome immediately after the war. After abandoning his studies, he worked as an assistant to his father, who was an archaeologist and restorer at the Villa Giulia Etruscan Museum.
He began to paint informalist canvases, which he showed in his first solo exhibition at Galleria Appia Antica in Rome. Later, together with Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio and Uncini, he took part in the group exhibition 5 pittori - Roma '60, curated by Restany, and art critics began to take an interest in his painting. He moved away from Informal Art and began producing monochrome works comprising a single colour of industrial enamel paint on wrapping paper glued to the canvas.
In 1961, he won the Premio Lissone for young contemporary painters and held a new solo show at Galleria La Salita in Rome. After a trip to the United States, during which he participated in The New Realism exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, he began to introduce fragments of urban iconography into his canvases. His work took the form of thematic cycles, from Paesaggi anemici to the 1966 series Futurismo rivisitato, dedicated to art history. He exhibited at the 1964 Venice Biennale, and the following year he took part in the inaugural exhibition at Studio Marconi, and was to become one of the gallery’s most representative artists. In addition to several new series Ossigeno Ossigeno, Oasi and Compagni, compagni, he also created avant-garde films, such as Anna Carini vista in agosto dalle farfalle, which he showed at Studio Marconi in 1967.
After his political and civil commitment during the years of protest, from 1970 he began experimenting with transferring television images onto emulsified canvas, then colouring them with industrial enamel paint. Numerous solo shows followed. In 1972 he exhibited at the X Rome Quadriennale and the following year he took part in Contemporanea, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva in the Villa Borghese parking lot. In 1974 a vast retrospective exhibition was held at the University of Parma, where more than a hundred works retraced his artistic career.
During these years he returned to art history, creating new cycles inspired by the masterpieces of the historic avant-gardes, among them Quadri equestri, Architettura, Naturale sconosciuto and Reperti. As well as organising numerous solo shows in Italy and abroad, he also took part in several editions of the Venice Biennale. His work was also included in major exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Italian art, including Identité italienne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1981; Italian Art of the XX century, Royal Academy, London, 1989; and The Italian Metamorphosis 1943–1968, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1994 (which then transferred to the Milan Triennale and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg).
Mario Schifano died in Rome in 1998.
The many exhibitions dedicated to his work include major retrospectives held at the following venues: Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2001); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2008–2009); Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, Milan, and Musée d'art moderne Saint-Etienne Métropole (2008–2009); Castello Pasquini, Livorno (2013); the Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, London and New York (2014); Complesso Museale Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (2017); the Mayor Gallery, London (2018); and CIMA, New York (2021).
These events are complemented by the important exhibitions organised by Fondazione Marconi: Schifano 1960–1964. Dal monocromo alla strada (2005); Schifano 1964–1970. Dal paesaggio alla TV (2006); Grande angolo per uomini, manifesti e paesaggi (2013); and the exhibition Mario Schifano. Qualcos’altro, organised by Gió Marconi (2020).
His most recent major group shows include The World Goes Pop, Tate Gallery, London (2016); Arte ribelle, Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, Milan (2017); Nascita di una nazione, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2018); I sei anni di Marcello Rumma 1965–1970, MADRE, Naples (2019); A. B.O. THEATRON L'Arte o la vita, Castello di Rivoli (2021); Vita nuova, MAMAC, Nice (2022); La luce del nero, Fondazione Burri, Città di Castello (2022).
Born in Homs, Libya, in 1934, Mario Schifano moved to Rome immediately after the war. After abandoning his studies, he worked as an assistant to his father, who was an archaeologist and restorer at the Villa Giulia Etruscan Museum.
He began to paint informalist canvases, which he showed in his first solo exhibition at Galleria Appia Antica in Rome. Later, together with Angeli, Festa, Lo Savio and Uncini, he took part in the group exhibition 5 pittori - Roma '60, curated by Restany, and art critics began to take an interest in his painting. He moved away from Informal Art and began producing monochrome works comprising a single colour of industrial enamel paint on wrapping paper glued to the canvas.
In 1961, he won the Premio Lissone for young contemporary painters and held a new solo show at Galleria La Salita in Rome. After a trip to the United States, during which he participated in The New Realism exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, he began to introduce fragments of urban iconography into his canvases. His work took the form of thematic cycles, from Paesaggi anemici to the 1966 series Futurismo rivisitato, dedicated to art history. He exhibited at the 1964 Venice Biennale, and the following year he took part in the inaugural exhibition at Studio Marconi, and was to become one of the gallery’s most representative artists. In addition to several new series Ossigeno Ossigeno, Oasi and Compagni, compagni, he also created avant-garde films, such as Anna Carini vista in agosto dalle farfalle, which he showed at Studio Marconi in 1967.
After his political and civil commitment during the years of protest, from 1970 he began experimenting with transferring television images onto emulsified canvas, then colouring them with industrial enamel paint. Numerous solo shows followed. In 1972 he exhibited at the X Rome Quadriennale and the following year he took part in Contemporanea, curated by Achille Bonito Oliva in the Villa Borghese parking lot. In 1974 a vast retrospective exhibition was held at the University of Parma, where more than a hundred works retraced his artistic career.
During these years he returned to art history, creating new cycles inspired by the masterpieces of the historic avant-gardes, among them Quadri equestri, Architettura, Naturale sconosciuto and Reperti. As well as organising numerous solo shows in Italy and abroad, he also took part in several editions of the Venice Biennale. His work was also included in major exhibitions dedicated to contemporary Italian art, including Identité italienne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1981; Italian Art of the XX century, Royal Academy, London, 1989; and The Italian Metamorphosis 1943–1968, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1994 (which then transferred to the Milan Triennale and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg).
Mario Schifano died in Rome in 1998.
The many exhibitions dedicated to his work include major retrospectives held at the following venues: Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2001); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2008–2009); Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, Milan, and Musée d'art moderne Saint-Etienne Métropole (2008–2009); Castello Pasquini, Livorno (2013); the Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery, London and New York (2014); Complesso Museale Palazzo Ducale, Mantua (2017); the Mayor Gallery, London (2018); and CIMA, New York (2021).
These events are complemented by the important exhibitions organised by Fondazione Marconi: Schifano 1960–1964. Dal monocromo alla strada (2005); Schifano 1964–1970. Dal paesaggio alla TV (2006); Grande angolo per uomini, manifesti e paesaggi (2013); and the exhibition Mario Schifano. Qualcos’altro, organised by Gió Marconi (2020).
His most recent major group shows include The World Goes Pop, Tate Gallery, London (2016); Arte ribelle, Galleria Gruppo Credito Valtellinese, Milan (2017); Nascita di una nazione, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2018); I sei anni di Marcello Rumma 1965–1970, MADRE, Naples (2019); A. B.O. THEATRON L'Arte o la vita, Castello di Rivoli (2021); Vita nuova, MAMAC, Nice (2022); La luce del nero, Fondazione Burri, Città di Castello (2022).