(Homs/Libya 1934–1998 Rome)
Senza titolo (paesaggio anemico), 1970/’75, signed Schifano, 190 x 175 cm, framed

Photo certificate:
Archivio Mario Schifano, archive no. 03149160416, Rome,13/5/2016

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibited:
CEIS, Rome, December 2015

On his return from his travels in the United States (between 1962 and 1964) Schifano immersed himself intensely in the Paesaggi anemici. In this work, the silver-grey and pale blue, the apple green and bottle green, empty the concept of “landscape” of every naturalistic, impressionistic, Romantic or oleographic shade, thanks also to the use of coloured paper and transparent plastic. No picture-postcard landscapes or sunsets. Ghostly, skeletal landscapes, filtered through melancholy and irony of thought and memory. Anaemic landscapes, arid and schematic like those of our urban outskirts, but painted with rich, pastose brushstrokes of improbable colours (...) the painting’s surface is uneven, composed of random drips of paint and visible brushstrokes, punctuated by empty spaces (...) (from Silvia Pegoraro, Mario Schifano, Il colore e la luce, Skira, 2006).

The screen, both the cinema screen and the screens of the many televisions that are permanently turned on in his studio and connected to a camera, is within the white rectangle at the centre of Paesaggio anemico. In the following years this would become Paesaggio TV, in which the televisual images are directly carried onto the emulsified canvas and filtered through a rainbow of colours.