(Homs/Libya 1934–1998 Rome)
A la Balla, 1965, signed and titled, enamel and graphite on canvas, diptych, 152.5 x 203.5 cm

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

Provenance:
Odyssia Gallery, New York (faded stamps on the reverse)
Private Collection, Italy
European Private Collection (acquired from the above in the
early 1970s)

Mario Schifano’s (1934–1998) life journey took him from Libya to Rome to New York, although the “Eternal City” of Rome remained an ever-recurring focus. Born in Libya in 1934, Rome became Mario Schifano’s new home at a young age. It was a city to which he remained true until his death in 1998.

In 1959, he began exhibiting his works in various solo and group exhibitions around the world. One highlight and milestone of his career was his participation in the 1962 “New Realists” show at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, where his works were shown alongside those of international artists including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.
Plinio de Martiis - Pop Art came later, with Sindney Janis’ 1962 exhibition ‘the new Realists’ featuring the likes of Warhol, Rosenquist, Segal, Wesselmann and Lichtenstein, but also Europeans like Tinguely. And there was Mario Schifano, a young Italian from the Roman borough of Trastevere, not yet 30 years old. He represented the avant-garde of contemporary painting”

Time spent in New York and the impact of American Pop Art left their mark on Mario Schifano and his work. From that point forward, the Italian painter incorporated, among other things, elements of mechanised civilisation and the advertising industry into his creative endeavours. Yet, his work also shows the influence of other art-historical greats such as Piero della Francesca and Malevich, Duchamp and Picabia, Balla and the Futurists.

Anita Pallenberg - Mario kept telling me about Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns…
America was like a dream. One day I said to him: ’My cousin lives in New York…’ We decided to go there. That was in December 1963; President Kennedy had only just been shot. Anita Pallenberg, model, actress and fashion designer

After his return from New York, Schifano became a pole of urban cultural life. The mid-60s were an extremely creative phase. Schifano produced artworks that offered an autonomous model for Roman or even European Pop Art: Leonardo, the homages to Giacomo Balla, the Paesaggi Anemici and his Futurismo rivisitato became paradigms of an Italian approach to the new urban landscape. At that time Schifano was contracted by the gallerist Giorgio Marconi.
Giorgio Marconi - I saw his first exhibition at Odyssia Gallery in 1964. I bought one of his works. Schifano seemed to me to be one of the best talents of the younger generation. His works depicted life in Italian society and the world in an original and ever-changing way. He was the artist and chronicler of that time. In June 1965, after six months of negotiations, an exclusivity agreement was concluded with him - for one year, and tacitly renewable. I would like to specify that this contract was “exclusive up to a point”, because one month after signing it Mario already sold one of his works to a football referee.

Plinio de Martiis - Mario and his friends Franco Angeli and Tano Festa had become the “masters of grief”, because they came to Rosati’s looking tired, jaded, haughty, and all dressed up in dark colours.
They had an intense social life, they had been to America, to Mexico, and had affairs with beautiful women.
From 1965 onwards, also because of drug addiction, their life became a suicide run.
from Luca Ronchi, Mario Schifano Una Biografia, Johan & Levi 2012

“Mario’s house was full of books; he loved books. He bought them or received them as a gift. He had loads of illustrated books on futurism, which inspired his moved stencils à la Balla. Giacomo Balla had died a few years before; he had lived in Via Oslavia in the Prati district of Rome.”
Memmo Mancini