Untitled

In his roughly brushed canvas, Mario Merz has always been interested in staging animals from the past, especially the great reptiles that have preceded and will probably survive mankind. In fact, in the pantheon of immemorial deities, the anthropomorphous lizard both fascinates and frightens.
Merz argued that "human imagination has always granted animals a symbolic 'fantasy'" (In: 'Mario Merz', Paris 1981.), suggesting that the symbols can be "religious", but also "organic". In this way, the lizard's presence emphasizes the artist's fascination for natures complexity and inexorable growth, suggesting the most expressionistic achievements of cave painting.