Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-65

Set For 2021 Exhibition At The Center For Italian Modern Art (CIMA)

CIMA TO PRESENT FIRST INSTITUTIONAL US EXHIBITION OF MULTIFACETED ARTIST AND PROLIFIC PAINTER MARIO SCHIFANO

JANUARY 26, 2021 - JUNE 5, 2021

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Leonardo, 1963
78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in, enamel on paper laid down on two attached canvases
Private Collection
© Archivio Mario Schifano
© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

New York, NY — The Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) has confirmed its 2020-2021 show: the first U.S. institutional exhibition of painter Mario Schifano (1934-1998), exploring his work from 1960-1965. A leading figure in Italian postwar and contemporary art, Schifano radically redefined painting through his multifaceted practice, as he marked the transition from postwar abstraction to the new figuration of the 1960s. Reassessing the tenets of painting and exploring multiple media, Schifano elaborated a new visual vocabulary as early as at the beginning of the 1960s. His practice was prescient of the development of visual arts internationally, to the extent that his work precurs international Pop Art and compares to the revolution carried out by Andy Warhol in the United States in the same years.

Sponsored by Rome’s Archivio Mario Schifano, Italy’s Ministry of Art and Culture (MiBACT), and Washington, D.C.’s Italian Embassy, the exhibition comprises works in various media. Focusing on the artist’s connections with the New York art scene, it surveys the development from the so-called monochromes of the early 1960s to the figurative practice he developed between 1962 and 1965, when he incorporated a distinctive Pop imagery into his work. Within the broader influence of American cultural models and lifestyle in Italy in the postwar years, Schifano was fascinated by popular and youth culture imported from the United States, as some titles of his ‘monochromes’ attest.

Manifesto 1960, 1960
59 x 67 x 3 1/2 in, enamel on paper laid down on canvas
Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia
© Archivio Mario Schifano
© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

His work between 1960 and 1962 drew the attention of the major dealer Ileana Sonnabend – whose gallery in Paris was then the gateway of new American avant-garde in Europe – to the extent that she organized an exhibition of Schifano’s paintings in her gallery in 1963. Thanks to the collaboration with The Sonnabend Collection Foundation, masterpieces included in that show will be displayed at CIMA, alongside remarkable works by the American artists represented by Sonnabend, such as Jim Dine, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, whose practice was of major interest to Schifano at that time.

A de Chirico, 1962
66 7/8 x 59 in, enamel on paper laid down on canvas
The Sonnabend Collection and Antonio Homem
© Archivio Mario Schifano
© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

The dialogue between the works on view will show how Schifano’s early paintings are of such radical modernity that they compare to the practice of the leading American artists of his time. In this respect, the evolution from monochrome to figuration was even more significant, as is extremely well analyzed in the exhibition. Before giving him a show in her gallery, Sonnabend succeeded in including a painting by Schifano in the pivotal exhibition “The New Realists,” organized at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1962, which marked the artist’s first exposure in the United States, even if he didn’t travel to New York on that occasion. Schifano sent a painting from the series titled Propaganda, in which he began to integrate references to reality into the picture plane, by incorporating logos of major American companies such as Coca-Cola and Esso. As per the documents, Schifano had started to paint the Propaganda series at the very beginning of 1962, a few months after Warhol, who used the Coca-Cola logo for the first time in 1961. Schifano couldn’t know about Warhol’s work at that time, and Propaganda attests to the absolute originality of the artist’s vision, vis-à-vis the tendencies which would define the 1960s internationally.

The powerful title of Propaganda series, two major iterations of which will be on view at CIMA, hints at the subtle feeling of disillusion that the artist started to feel while delving into American culture as he could access it from Italy. After definitely turning to figuration and breaking up with Ileana Sonnabend, the artist finally traveled to New York, accompanied by his then girlfriend, the famous model and actress Anita Pallenberg. The couple stayed in the city from December 1963 to July 1964. On that occasion, Schifano had his first solo exhibition in New York, at the Odyssia Gallery, which was positively reviewed on The New York Times. Nonetheless, the stay in New York coincided with an increasing disillusion about America, as conveyed by the growing feeling of solitude and disenchantment of the beautiful photographs he took in New York, a comprehensive selection of which will be on view at CIMA for the first time in the United States.

Despite visiting the studios and meeting the artists whose work he had known by then, such as Jasper Johns or Andy Warhol, Schifano was more deeply in touch with Frank O’ Hara and, through him, with the network of writers, poets, artists, musicians and critics associated with experimental and even countercultural tendencies, from Allen Ginsberg and Bill Berkson to Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus.

The paintings created after his return to his country reflect the awareness of the complexity of the New York art and cultural scene. On one hand, Schifano kept multiple contacts with the Anglo-Saxon counterculture and new tendencies, ranging from rock and progressive music to experimental cinema, as attested by his collaborations and relationship with The Rolling Stones and the realization of the film Round Trip, a rare document shot in New York in 1964, presented at CIMA for the first time in the United States, which is an early account of Schifano’s visionary and radical taste for film. On the other, his paintings expressed the desire to reaffirm the artist’s own independent nature and his cultural roots in Italy as opposed to the myths of America which he started to perceive as false. Imbued with growing political references, the works that Schifano would make after leaving New York compose a distinctive repertoire of images, which was largely owed to the multifaceted experiences and the incredible evolution of the artist’s life and art in the early 1960s.

En plein air, 1963
63 x 63 in, enamel on paper laid down on two attached canvases
Private Collection, Monaco
© Archivio Mario Schifano
© 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

Through a selection of approximately thirty works of arresting quality, the exhibition aims to present Schifano as a pivotal figure who bridged Italian, as well as, international modern and contemporary art.

On display from January 26, 2021 - June 5, 2021, the exhibition is curated by Francesco Guzzetti, Ph.D, the 2019-2020 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Morgan Library & Museum’s Drawing Institute and former CIMA Fellow (2014–2015).

This ground-breaking exhibition will be held at CIMA (421 Broome Street, 4th floor, New York City, 10013) and is open to the public Thursday-Saturday from 2-6pm. Guided tours led by CIMA fellows on Friday and Saturday at 11am and 2pm. Admission is $10 during open hours, $15 for guided tours, and free for students with a valid ID and CIMA members.

For information and reservations, visit http://www.italianmodernart.org/

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue including color reproductions of all the works on view as well as an introduction by Francesco Guzzetti and biographical essay by CIMA fellows.

About

ABOUT CIMA:

Founded in 2013, CIMA is a public non-profit dedicated to presenting modern and contemporary Italian art to international audiences. Through critically acclaimed exhibitions—many of them bringing work to U.S. audiences for the first time—along with a wide variety of public programs and substantial support for new scholarship awarded through its international fellowship program, CIMA situates Italian modern art in an expansive historic and cultural context, illuminating its continuing relevance to contemporary culture and serving as an incubator of curatorial ideas for larger cultural institutions.

CIMA works to add new voices to scholarship on modern Italian art with annual fellowships that open fresh perspectives and new avenues of research. A visit begins with a complimentary espresso, followed by an informal exhibition tour with one of the resident fellows. Visitors are welcome to linger for additional viewing and conversation.

ABOUT ARCHIVIO MARIO SCHIFANO:

Archivio Mario Schifano was created in 2003 by the will of the legitimate heirs, with the collaboration of scholars chosen for their in-depth knowledge of the artist's work and connected to him throughout his life. The Archivio owns impressive documentation resources, almost totally digitized, and has to its credit the most important exhibitions and publications of recent years on the artist. Archivio Mario Schifano holds the copyrights of the films and artworks. For further information, please see the website of the Archivio at the following link: www.marioschifano.it

ABOUT MARIO SCHIFANO:

Mario Schifano was an Italian artist. Born in Homs, Libya on September 20, 1934, he emigrated with his family to Italy at a young age. Since the beginning of the 1960s, he was immediately recognized as a leading figure in Italian postwar and contemporary art. He is best known for his so-called “monochromes” and the distinctive figurative works often made with a special collage technique combining wrapping paper and industrial pigments, such as enamel. His work often mixed references to low and high culture, popular icons and art history, featuring well-known brand logos or recurring motifs in the vein of Pop Art. American artist Ed Ruscha (1937 -) recalled being put in with the Pop artists in the 1960s and noted that “Mario Schifano painted in that vein too. I felt like we had a common interest in popular culture, which means ordinary things.” Constantly adapting to contemporary culture, Schifano worked in numerous media, shifting between film, music, or photography—often employing more than one at a time. Until his death in Rome on January 26, 1998, aged 63, in the whole trajectory of his life as an artist, Schifano’s work always resonated with major political, social and cultural issues of his time.

December 7, 2020 1:20pm ET by Pressparty  

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