(Homs/Libya 1934–1998 Rome)
En plein air, quadro per la primavera, 1964, signed, titled and dated on the reverse (on each canvas), enamel and graphite on canvas, 200 x 200 cm, diptych (two canvases: each 100 x 200 cm), framed

This work is registered in the Archivio Mario Schifano, Rome and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity

Provenance:
Galleria Odyssia, Rome-New York (stamp on the reverse)
Studio Marconi, Milan
Giancarlo Tonelli Collection, Terni (stamp on the reverse)
Sale, Sotheby’s Milan, 24 November 2015, lot 47
European Private Collection (acquired by the current owner at the previous auction)

Exhibited:
Rome, Galleria Odyssia, Mario Schifano, 1964, exh. cat. no. 15
Parma, Mario Schifano, Salone delle Scuderie in Pilotta, February – March 1974, no.93 with ill.
Parma, L’opera dipinta 1960 - 1980, Salone delle Scuderie in Pilotta, 1982, p. 210, no. 55 with ill.
Conegliano, Mario Schifano 1957–1997, Palazzo Sarcinelli Galleria comunale d’Arte, 4 April - 31 May, 1998, p. 87 with ill.
Milan, Schifano 1960 - 1964. Dal monocromo alla strada, Fondazione Marconi, 10 February - 26 March 2005, p. 193 with ill.

Literature:
Studio metodologico riguardante la catalogazione informatica dei dati relativi alle opere di Mario Schifano presenti presso la Fondazione M. S. Multistudio, vol. A) 1, Opere su tela 1956 - 1982, p. 65, no. 64/032 with ill.
F. Conte (ed.), Con lo Zingarelli sotto il braccio, I LIbri per Mario Schifano, Accademia dell’Arcadia, Rome 2022, p. 81, mentioned

I want to paint painting
Mario Schifano

The year in which “En Plein Air. Quadro per la primavera” was created is a crucial date in Mario Schifano's artistic trajectory: it is the first year he participated in the Venice Biennale, a highly controversial edition that would award the Golden Lion to Robert Rauschenberg, thus enshrining the definitive consecration of American art and Pop Art on the international playing field. It was also the year of Schifano’s return to Italy after his brief but prolific season in New York, alongside gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend. From this season on, Schifano occupied himself with the new stimuli offered by Galleria Odyssia and Studio Marconi in Milan.

It is in this context of fervent experimentation that “En Plein Air. Quadro per la primavera” was born. The work offers itself as an opening to an idyllic world, with a supposedly bucolic charm. And if, on the one hand, the imposing dimensions of the diptych recall the large canvases typical of the post-World War II American school (while rejecting its abstract-informal matrix), on the other hand, the historical landscape theme is filtered through a pop-impressionist iconography: the pictorial stroke becomes fast, rapid, pressing, at times impetuous, transporting the viewer to a post-modern Eden.

A soft, blunt frame, delicately traced with grease pencil, envelops and inscribes the natural landscape, implicitly recalling the television screens that were appearing in Italian homes at that time. Through this simple artifice, Schifano appears to foresee the growing influence of mass culture and the imminent spectacularisation and commercialisation of art and nature itself, prompting a profound reflection on the role of creativity in the age of the culture industry.
Yet Schifano's gaze is not the retrospective and nostalgic gaze of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. It does not turn to the past in a desperate attempt to escape the 'storm of progress' (Sturm des Fortschritts) but is instead a childlike – yet never childish – gaze. His gaze is akin to Warhol's, which scrutinises the world with innocent wonder and tries to decipher the contradictions of its time by drawing on the magic of the everyday.

(...) “The series revolves around the same image appropriated from an advertising campaign for the Volkswagen Type 3, a family car produced by the German automotive company and marketed in Italy as Volkswagen 1500 Familcar. The original image shows a family on lakeside picknick; Schifano presumably projected a slide on the surface – which explains why the painted image is reversed – then cut the family out and covered the silhouette of the car with a mask that vaguely resembles the shape of the car. The resulting image is disorienting yet consistent with the artist’s interest”(...)

Francesco Guzzetti, Facing America: Mario Schifano, 1960-65

I saw his first exhibition in '64 in Rome, at Quadrani's Odyssia Gallery. I bought a work. Adami was right when he advised me to go to the exhibition. Schifano seemed to me to be one of the best talents of the younger generation. His works were incredibly new, and reflected a portrait of life in Italian society and the world in an original and ever-changing way. He was the sensitive artist-chronicler of those times.

Giorgio Marconi