Michelangelo Pistoletto

Achille Tomasinelli, Turin

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1980

Turin, Galleria d'Arte Il Quadrifoglio, I diritti della Fantasia, 1976, illustrated

In an attempt to break away from the influence of Francis Bacon on his early work, Pistoletto began eliminating all trace of emotional expression from his pictures, depicting immobile figures (mostly self-portraits) against empty black and gold grounds. In 1963 he showed his first `mirror paintings’ at the Galleria Galatea in Turin. In these works Pistoletto pasted life-size static figures onto polished stainless-steel panels, thus introducing the viewer into the work of art though a process of identification and reflection. In ``La Bionda Svedese’’ the viewer is introduced almost as a voyeur into this intimate scene of a beautiful woman playing a guitar through the reflection of one’s own figure. Seated naked on the ground, her pose suggests innocent provocation and focussed concentration on the instrument she plays. She is oblivious to the changing reality of people entering the picture plane and determining in their own way the content and rules of representation.

``… the figures hover like mute specters, suspended within a reflected world that includes our own image. In this respect, the finished works become the perfect representation of contemporary media culture, revealing, as they do, our narcissistic investment in the second-hand images that every day surround us. At the same time, by forcing us to observe ourselves viewing, the mirrors disrupt our absorption in the depicted scenes. Embodied subjectivity continues to reside in our awareness of our attraction to the images before us.’’ (Claire Gilman, Arte Povera, Selections from the Sonnabend Collection, Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, 2001, pp. 41 & 42).