Cielo

Mario Schifano is an exuberant figure the Italian post-modern period. Self-taught from a young age and ceramics restorer by trade, Schifano embraced the meta-critical practice of informal art and later collage, raising his profile as one of the leading names of Italian Pop Art. He coincidentally exhibited works during the ‘New Realists’ show in 1962, alongside monuments of the genre such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Reducing his contribution to 20th-century art to Pop collages is nevertheless limiting. A rebel at heart, Schifano espoused the counterculture appeal of Rock n’ Roll, acquainting himself with rising names of the London and New York scenes and unfortunately falling victim to one of the less enviable aspects of this lifestyle: drug addiction. His artistic practice continued to evolve, reverting to former styles and aesthetics of the modern era. Cielo is a section-based landscape painting. Its distinctive plane by plane structure dialogues quite evidently with another piece by Schifano of the same year: Grande particolare di paesaggio italiano a colori. Both paintings seem to share the identical compositional line work, with the artist colouring different areas in different hues.