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Lot Essay
From the collection of Alessandro Grassi, 31 Siciliani (1976) and Paesaggio (1984) are emblematic of Salvo’s vibrant, expansive oeuvre, demonstrating the evolution of the artist’s practice from his early text-based works to the phantasmagorical landscapes for which he is best known. In Paesaggio, Salvo conjures a luminous streetscape bathed in an otherworldly glow. In the distance, the sun rises—or perhaps sets—behind a cool blue mountain range which keeps watch over the still, silent street, its warmth illuminating buildings painted in tones of ochre, lime green, and magenta. A pale purple minaret soars skyward, and deep green, bulbous foliage blooms. Executed almost a decade prior, in 31 Siciliani (1976) the geographical outline of Sicily is overlaid with the names of the island’s most prominent historical figures. Together, these works demonstrate Salvo’s enduring interest in selfhood and its articulation through history and landscape.
Born Salvatore Mangione in rural Sicily in 1947, towards the end of the 1960s Salvo moved to Turin, where he became a key figure in the city’s Arte Povera movement alongside leading figures like Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone and Alighiero Boetti. He shared a studio with the latter, and like Boetti, Salvo exploited the slipperiness of language, revealing it to be both playful and pliable. His early work included photomontages and marble plaques carved with witty inscriptions or his own name. 31 Siciliani is part of a series of works which look to Sicily’s historical figures of renown. Amongst others, it pays homage to ancient Greek poets Theocritus and Stesichorus, Arab poet Ibn Ḥamdīs, Quattrocento painter Antonello da Messina, composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Vincenzo Bellini, and Salvo himself, weaving their names into a cartography of the land executed in vibrant tones of yellow and fiery orange.
Against the prevailing dominance of conceptual art across the 1970s, Salvo’s decisive turn to figurative landscape painting was inspired by the metaphysical streetscapes Giorgio de Chirico. Like de Chirico, Salvo conjured dreamlike tableaus articulated through distilled form and deeply saturated colour, forging a visual language of space and place. He reduced architecture and its surrounding nature to essential geometric form, like the quivering vessels in still lifes by Giorgio Morandi. The uncanny slippage between recognisable objects and otherworldly hues also recalls the visionary landscapes of Henri Rousseau. ‘I could be considered as pertaining to that category of artists who express themselves through rapture’, Salvo said. ‘I cannot help but believe in the existence of occult forces which, while the painter sleeps, enter the painting itself and correct and improve it’ (Salvo, quoted in Salvo: Paintings 1975-1987, exh. cat. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1987, p. 27). Works such as Paesaggio welcome the viewer into Salvo’s spellbinding painted world.
Born Salvatore Mangione in rural Sicily in 1947, towards the end of the 1960s Salvo moved to Turin, where he became a key figure in the city’s Arte Povera movement alongside leading figures like Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone and Alighiero Boetti. He shared a studio with the latter, and like Boetti, Salvo exploited the slipperiness of language, revealing it to be both playful and pliable. His early work included photomontages and marble plaques carved with witty inscriptions or his own name. 31 Siciliani is part of a series of works which look to Sicily’s historical figures of renown. Amongst others, it pays homage to ancient Greek poets Theocritus and Stesichorus, Arab poet Ibn Ḥamdīs, Quattrocento painter Antonello da Messina, composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Vincenzo Bellini, and Salvo himself, weaving their names into a cartography of the land executed in vibrant tones of yellow and fiery orange.
Against the prevailing dominance of conceptual art across the 1970s, Salvo’s decisive turn to figurative landscape painting was inspired by the metaphysical streetscapes Giorgio de Chirico. Like de Chirico, Salvo conjured dreamlike tableaus articulated through distilled form and deeply saturated colour, forging a visual language of space and place. He reduced architecture and its surrounding nature to essential geometric form, like the quivering vessels in still lifes by Giorgio Morandi. The uncanny slippage between recognisable objects and otherworldly hues also recalls the visionary landscapes of Henri Rousseau. ‘I could be considered as pertaining to that category of artists who express themselves through rapture’, Salvo said. ‘I cannot help but believe in the existence of occult forces which, while the painter sleeps, enter the painting itself and correct and improve it’ (Salvo, quoted in Salvo: Paintings 1975-1987, exh. cat. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam 1987, p. 27). Works such as Paesaggio welcome the viewer into Salvo’s spellbinding painted world.