Michelangelo Pistoletto

Acquired from the artist in the early 1970s by the previous owner

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate although the female figure's jumper and hair is lighter and more vibrant while the skin tonalities and male figure's orange jumper are deeper and richer in the original. The illustration also fails to convey the mirrored surface of the stainless steel ground. Condition: This work is in good condition. There is a hole in the lower right corner which is likely to be original and the mirrored surface to the extreme lower right edge is slightly dull. There are some scratches to the stainless steel surface, most notably a tapering vertical scratch along the right edge, a diagonal scratch just above this, and another diagonal scratch just above the female figure's head. There are a number of small retouchings in places to the painted tissue. Inspection under ultraviolet light does not reveal any further restoration.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Comprised of a graphic self-representation taken from a film still of the artist and his wife Maria Pioppi enclosed in a passionate embrace, Innamorati (Maria e Michelangelo) (Lovers, Maria and Michelangelo) is an early example of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s most important and instantly recognisable series, the Quadri Specchiati or Mirror Paintings. Extremely rare, the artist only ever created nine renditions of this poignant scene. The present work invites the viewer into a voyeuristic interaction with the two intertwined young lovers, absorbed in an intimate, unseen and ultimately unknown world of their own, curiously abutting the lines between representation and reality as the painting becomes a space for anyone to inhabit. Created at a crucial point in the artist’s ascending career, 1967 marked the seminal occurrence of the very first Arte Povera exhibition, Fuoco, Immagine, Acqua, Terra at L’Arrico Gallery in Rome. The year was also personally fortuitous: marking the beginning of the artist’s life-long relationship with Maria, here made the central focus of the picture, with the artist himself only alluded to through an elusive glimpse at his facial features, which further enchances the moment’s intimacy. Synchronously incorporating both the quotidian materialism of Arte Povera, with its mirror-like surface, and the mass-produced quality of Pop art, with the photographic figures, in Innamorati (Maria e Michelangelo), Pistoletto forges an entirely unique aesthetic that enmeshes the exalted and immortal dimension of the artwork with the changeable and transitory conditions of existence.

Firmly installed in the pantheon of Europe’s most influential contemporary artists, Pistoletto’s dialogic Mirror Paintings defy categorisation, oscillating between spectacle and sculpture, photograph and performance. Frustrated with the imitative relationship between traditional painting and reality, the artist first experimented with a reflective ground in 1956 with a series of self-portraits on a shiny surface. Pistoletto consequentially refined this process in the early 1960s by substituting the glossy ground for a highly polished stainless steel one, onto which he pasted finely rendered photo-realist images that were painted on tissue paper. Soon after, in 1967, Pistoletto met Maria, initiating not only a life-long relationship but also a prolific artistic collaboration. Alongside the artist, Maria was a part of The Zoo, a renowned circle of artists, musicians, actors and writers, active between 1968 and 1971, who played a key role in the advancement of Arte Povera. The group performed unprompted theatre in Italian streets and piazzas, drawing on the rich traditions of wandering minstrels and the Italian improvised theatre, the Commedia dell’Arte, leading Pistoletto to develop his spirit of openness and experimentation that has become a fundamental characteristic of his body of work.

While toying with the dominant Pop aesthetic of the time, Pistoletto was also highly influenced by Italian artists such as Lucio Fontana, Agostino Bonalumi, and Enrico Castellani. The essence of Fontana’s Spatialismo Manifesto, to refute the traditional parameters of two-dimensional painting and create a space in which the viewer actively explores the possibilities of art, is echoed in Pistoletto’s phantasmagorical Mirror Paintings. Extending the canvas by introducing a reflective surface, he examines and unravels the distortive illusionism of perspective. Masterfully appropriating the language of trompe-l’oeil to entirely subvert it, the Mirror Paintings position themselves within a grand artistic tradition of mirrors such as Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère or The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez. What distinguishes Pistoletto’s works is a theatrical dramaturgy that infuses these pieces with rich performative aspects, naturally in flux through the constantly changing angle of the viewer. This is particularly evident in works such as Innamorati (Maria e Michelangelo), wherein the self-absorbed and self-contained subject matter overtly emphasises the intrusive presence of the viewer, transforming their function as living participants into what Pistoletto was increasingly coming to see as not just the ‘theatre’ of painting but as an entire world-theatre that embraced all aspects of life.