(Florence 1940–1971 Rome)
Zone Riflesse, signed, dated Paolo Scheggi 65 on the reverse, with directional arrow, acrylic on 3 superimposed canvases, 120 x 80 x 5.5 cm, framed, (PP)

The work has been registered by the Associazione Paolo Scheggi, Milan and will be included in the Catalogo Ragionato Paolo Scheggi currently being compiled by Massimo Barbero.

Provenance:
Galleria Il Centro, Naples (label on the reverse)
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibited:
Bologna, Paolo Scheggi, Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 6 October - 10 November 1976, exhibition cat. Ed. del Naviglio, Milan, ill. 17 (Curators: Deanna Farneti and Franca Scheggi)

… “I like your restlessness and your research, your profoundly black, red and white paintings that reveal your thoughts as well as your fears. I can only wish you a “happy” career and remind you to be humble, very humble, for we are “nothing” in time.”
(Lucio Fontana, letter to Scheggi on the occasion of the opening of his exhibition at Il Cancello gallery in Bologna, 1962)

Where painting indicates a trend towards invading the field of industrial design, towards absolute planning and the serialised production of multiple identical specimens; there exists, in contrast - and certainly will do for a very long time – a profound desire in visual art to preserve (...) its characteristic uniqueness and refinement, one that only an artist’s touch can confer.
To this last current belong young artists working in Milan, who in the last few years have distinguished themselves through their precise desire for purity and compositional refinement.
Far from being an arbitrary grouping, or a commercial union, the young artists Bonalumi, Castellani, Scheggi (with the inclusion of Lucio Fontana, in homage to a man who discovered a few constant elements of modern art long before everyone else in Italy) seem to me especially interesting because they find themselves at a watershed between those artistic currents that resort to traditional media (…) and the other currents to which I refer above: those indefatigable proponents of arta programata, “industrial designers of useless objects”, optical and kinetic artists…
In contrast, the artists mentioned above maintain a profound respect for personalised execution whilst demonstrating a preference for the current which we might call “objectual painting”, i.e. “painting as an object”, constituting an integral element of living space, acting either as a modulator in spatial dimensions or, more simply, as a mere sculptural, chromatic element created by the play of forms and colours, and yet always the result of a carefully reasoned and structural plan.
(Gillo Dorfles, “Pittura Oggetto a Milano”, text for the exhibition at Galleria Arco d’Albert in Rome, 1966)