(Rome 1914–1998)
Impronte nere, signed and dated on the reverse Scialoja ’60 – febbraio 1960, inscribed on the stretcher All’ultimo n.1, oil and sand on canvas, 130 x 160 cm, stretcher, (PP)

Provenance:
Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist –
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibited:
Rome, Toti Scialoja – Opere dal 1940 al 1991 (antologica), Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 1991

Around 1958 Scialoja felt the need to leave the mark of the most intimate recesses of his soul, by means of something that was at once more direct and definite than a shifting sign or a svelte brushstroke. He managed to do so by resorting to what he termed “l’impronta” (in Italian a “print” or “mark”), that is, the act itself of marking a blank canvas with a matrix full of already mixed colour serving both as a personal mark and ¬– thanks to its repetitions and alternations – as a way of beating time.

As Scialoja stated: “Having exhausted space as a representative dimension, today the measure of my expression is based on time…on the perception of my objective existence”. The idea of integrating time in the spatial reality of a surface is a time-honoured ambition that has often recurred in the history of painting. The repetition of similar, yet not identical, elements in a discontinuous pattern inevitably creates rhythm, a “narrative”: the story of man reaching out of himself and finding his expression by means of an unmistakable gesture, his own print.
(Gillo Dorfles, Ultime tendenze nell’arte d’oggi, 1961)