MARIO SCHIFANO (1934 - 1998) 'Palma' (Palm) Enamel on canva...

Hammer

€6,500

MARIO SCHIFANO (1934 - 1998) 'Palma' (Palm) Enamel on canvas, 99 x 59cm Signed 'Schifano' Mario Schifano was an Italian Post-Modern painter and collage artist. His mixed media works incorporated enamel, wax crayons, gouache and photographs. Schifano’s work consistently defied definition by a singular movement or style, starting with monochromatic canvas’ of the late 1950s before moving into pop art and advertising followed by sculpture and landscape painting. Born in 1934 in Libya, his family relocated to Rome after the Second World War. He was not formally trained and instead took up painting independently and began making his mixed media monochromatic works applied with pieces of wrapping paper and stencils. These paintings were an instant success, and he was included in New Realists exhibition in 1962 at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York alongside artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Both works on offer in this sale are part of series that Schifano started to make in the 1970s through to 1990s. The Palma series incorporated paintings, screenprints and life size iron sculptures of the trees. The artworks follow a similar composition, depicting an upright palm tree, left unpainted, its shape and form created by the use of colour around it. Using quick impastoed brushstrokes, Schifano lets the drips of paint run down the length of the canvas bleeding the colours into one another. The Campo il per pane or ‘Bread Field’, depicts sheaves of grain, in a multitude of brightly colour tones against a blue sky. This series ties in with sculptures he made of loaves of bread in the 1990s signifying his interest in ‘Arte Povera’ movement in which artists’ embraced the use of many different kinds of materials for their work. In 2023 Magazzino Italian Art Museum in New York held two major retrospectives Mario Schifano: The Rise of the 60’s and Mario Schifano: Germinal. Niamh Corcoran, September 2024