Paesaggio anemico (Anemic Landscape)

Abandoning the monochromes and Pop canvases that had brought him international renown, in 1963 Mario Schifano debuted a new series, the Paesaggi anemici. Seeking to deconstruct the traditional landscape painting, Schifano produced flat scenes elaborated with stylised elements rendered using a reduced palette. Schifano was included in the 1964 Venice Biennale where he showed the Paesaggi anemici.  Hoping to understand the value of select details, in these paintings the artist isolated terrestrial elements, zooming and magnifying them as if looking through the lens of a camera. Ultimately, his was a process of thinning, filtering and translating, from this technique Schifano coined the titular anaemic.
Painted in 1965, Paesaggio anemico focuses on the sky, framing and enlarging a single detail above the horizon, while  simplifying the landscape beneath into two irregular green bands. From the solitary cloud that occupies much of the composition a small tube emerges as if hoping to reach beyond the limits of the canvas. Much of the land and sky seem to melt away, obscured by Schifano’s drips and brushwork; characteristically, he created Paesaggio anemico using varnish, an industrial, quick-drying paint. When the landscape is made anaemic, dissolving into pure form, it is transformed into a self-reflexive object; no longer a window to the world, instead the present work reveals its own creation.