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Lot Essay
‘I was starting from a special zero, that wasn’t a resetting zero. It was zero. It was something much more modern than a work of art, that I wanted to do’
M. SCHIFANO
‘Making a yellow painting was making a yellow painting and that’s all’
M. SCHIFANO
Executed in 1960, N. 6 is one of the very first of Mario Schifano’s breakthrough series of monochrome enamel paintings, a radical group of works that not only established the artist’s reputation, but redefined and reaffirmed the aesthetic potentials of painting in the post-war era. Rendered with parcel paper laid down on canvas and covered in thick, tactile enamel paint, often embellished with industrial numbers or symbols, the Monochromi were at once entirely abstract yet at the same time insistently painterly; paintings that defied definition. Absorbing the ephemera of contemporary life in Rome, Schifano pioneered an aesthetic that broke from the subjective, gestural abstraction of the Informel, as well as the slick, minimal conceptualism of his Milanese contemporaries. In this way, he returned painting to a tabula rasa, reasserting the power of the composite materials themselves and opening up the possibilities of paint. 'At first I used to paint with a very few colours', Schifano recalled in 1972, 'because my work expressed the idea of the emblematic, of street signs, of perceptual phenomena, of primal things. I thought that painting meant starting from something absolutely primal... I would paint works like this: with blue, with red, with yellow, with green, these were signs of energy... with nothing in them, empty images (…) that went beyond any cultural intention. They wanted to be only themselves' (Mario Schifano in an interview with E. Siciliano, (trans. F. Luino), 'Lui ama Nancy la fotografa', Il Mondo, 16th November 1972).
1960 was a watershed year in the life and art of Schifano. Up until this point, Schifano had been making Informel-inspired works. Often composed of a monochrome coloured, cement base incised with tactile incisions, these early works allowed Schifano to explore the material qualities and physical possibilities of painting. The emergence of his Monochromi in 1960 therefore serves as both a culmination of his recent work and a new beginning. In November 1960, these breakthrough works were included in a group show of five artists – Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, Francesco Lo Savio and Giuseppe Uncini – held at the Galleria La Salita, Rome and organised by Pierre Restany. Founded in 1957 by Gian Tomaso Liverani, the first owner of N. 6, the Galleria La Salita became one of the foremost galleries for contemporary art in the city, and it was this exhibition that brought Schifano major international notice and critical acclaim.
M. SCHIFANO
‘Making a yellow painting was making a yellow painting and that’s all’
M. SCHIFANO
Executed in 1960, N. 6 is one of the very first of Mario Schifano’s breakthrough series of monochrome enamel paintings, a radical group of works that not only established the artist’s reputation, but redefined and reaffirmed the aesthetic potentials of painting in the post-war era. Rendered with parcel paper laid down on canvas and covered in thick, tactile enamel paint, often embellished with industrial numbers or symbols, the Monochromi were at once entirely abstract yet at the same time insistently painterly; paintings that defied definition. Absorbing the ephemera of contemporary life in Rome, Schifano pioneered an aesthetic that broke from the subjective, gestural abstraction of the Informel, as well as the slick, minimal conceptualism of his Milanese contemporaries. In this way, he returned painting to a tabula rasa, reasserting the power of the composite materials themselves and opening up the possibilities of paint. 'At first I used to paint with a very few colours', Schifano recalled in 1972, 'because my work expressed the idea of the emblematic, of street signs, of perceptual phenomena, of primal things. I thought that painting meant starting from something absolutely primal... I would paint works like this: with blue, with red, with yellow, with green, these were signs of energy... with nothing in them, empty images (…) that went beyond any cultural intention. They wanted to be only themselves' (Mario Schifano in an interview with E. Siciliano, (trans. F. Luino), 'Lui ama Nancy la fotografa', Il Mondo, 16th November 1972).
1960 was a watershed year in the life and art of Schifano. Up until this point, Schifano had been making Informel-inspired works. Often composed of a monochrome coloured, cement base incised with tactile incisions, these early works allowed Schifano to explore the material qualities and physical possibilities of painting. The emergence of his Monochromi in 1960 therefore serves as both a culmination of his recent work and a new beginning. In November 1960, these breakthrough works were included in a group show of five artists – Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, Francesco Lo Savio and Giuseppe Uncini – held at the Galleria La Salita, Rome and organised by Pierre Restany. Founded in 1957 by Gian Tomaso Liverani, the first owner of N. 6, the Galleria La Salita became one of the foremost galleries for contemporary art in the city, and it was this exhibition that brought Schifano major international notice and critical acclaim.