Enamel on emulsified canvas
inch 45.28×62.99 / cm 115×160
1973-74
NOTES: Signed on the back;
Certificate of authenticity by Archivio Generale dell’Opera di Mario Schifano n° O1053080705 dated 15/07/2008
EXHIBITIONS:
1975, Florence, Inventario, Galleria Sangallo, Viale Don Minzoni;
2010, Firenze, Mario Schifano. In diretta, Sangallo ART Station, ill. in cat. pp. 24-25
2019-2020, Milan, Mario Schifano. In Onda TV, Studio Guastalla Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, ill. in cat. p. 23 and on the cover
PROVENANCE: Galleria Sangallo di M. Secci, Firenze
Through the screen
At the beginning of the 1970s, Schifano became aware of the enormous potential of television, envisaging a future enveloped in a flow of images issuing from a screen and not reality.
In the emulsified canvas we are exhibiting, the unnaturally-coloured trees emerge from the space of the cathode ray tube. Schifano continues his exploration of the theme of landscape via a visual naturalism that is not an imitation of nature, but rather a powerful reconstruction and redefinition of reality by means of random images extrapolated and renamed, hence re-created.
At this time of cloistered living within our homes, everyone is compelled to undergo the same pictorial revolution as he did.
The windows are “closed” and our images of the outside world are no longer those experienced in first person, but provided by way of news broadcasts and TV programmes.
As a result, we feel the need to redefine the world around us, through images to be decoded and renamed in a sort of personal diary that becomes the frame of a collective jigsaw puzzle.
Discover the video of the artwork (right-click on the link and select “open link in another browser window”) https://youtube.com/shorts/PWhGm_Zy7oo?feature=share
Mario Schifano lived in Rome in the 1970s and had a very large studio overlooking the Tevere, but the view from outside was completely blocked because the windows were kept constantly closed. His real landscape, as he titled his works from those years, such as this one, Paesaggio TV (TV Landscape), was what was broadcast on the countless televisions kept on 24 hours a day. Schifano took photos at the moments he deemed most suitable, and these photos were then emulsified on black canvases on which we see the profile of the cathode ray tube that many of you will remember. The emulsified images were then painted with acrylic colors. In an Italy where there were still only two TV channels broadcasting at very limited times, Schifano had already understood that in the future we would live in an uninterrupted flow of images, and he understood that this flow would be our true landscape.