Salvatore Scarpitta

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
Galleria Notizie, Turin
Studio Guenzani, Milan
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the mid 1990s

Radda in Chianti, Castello di Volpaia, Salvatore Scarpitta, 1992, p. 27, no. 8, illustrated

Luigi Sansone, Salvatore Scarpitta: Catalogue Raisonné, Milan 2005, p. 170, no. 238, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality tends more towards a sandy beige colour. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is evident under ultra-violet light.
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"His [Scarpitta's] geometrization becomes evident in works like The Corn Queen, an anticipation of post-informel art, the need to reduce expression to its minimal extreme, that will become typical in the work of the next decade.  The invention of the wrapped canvases is the model for the surpassing of informalism.   The sole canvas, not being covered with pigmentation anymore, above all tells us of a need for silence." (Elena Pontiggia, 'Salvatore Scarpitta, The Uniqueness of Expression', in Exhibition Catalogue, Centro d'Arte Arbur, Scarpitta, 2000, pp. 85-86).

Salvatore Scarpitta's Corn Queen is unequivocally one of the most revolutionary works to emerge from the Italian art scene during the late 1950s.  Belonging to the highest tier of Scarpitta's oeuvre and part of the pioneering series of 'torn' paintings initiated in 1957, Scarpitta arrived at a form of absolute abstraction in which the canvas became the central focus of the work, rather than the surface to be worked upon.  Executed in 1959, Corn Queen represents the climax of this series in its rigorously disciplined schema of interlacing bands of monochrome canvas weighted with resin and sand – an early prototype of Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani's quest for an art of total dematerealization and autonomy.  Allied with the groundbreaking works produced by his contemporaries Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, The Corn Queen is a superlative example of one of the most innovative deviants to painterly convention engendered by the first generation of artists to emerge out of the postwar political climate in Europe.

Born in New York in 1919, Scarpitta travelled to the country of his ancestral roots in 1937 to pursue a career as a painter.   In 1957 Scarpitta's artistic breakthrough followed two critically acclaimed solo shows at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan and at the Galleria La Taratuga in Rome; it was here that the first 'torn' paintings were exhibited.  Having previously developed a painterly style inspired by Arshile Gorky and close in aesthetic to the contemporaneous abstraction of Afro, the new works signalled a transformed and minimalistic approach to the canvas as a three-dimensional art object.  No longer acting as a support, the stretcher became an armature around which swathes of monochrome torn canvas were rhythmically wrapped and woven as overlapping textural bandages.  In describing his own method Scarpitta expressed a certain degree of removal from artistic control: "I didn't have a plan, I took the canvas, I cut it, reversed it and wrapped it around the frame." (Salvatore Scarpitta in conversation with Laura Cherubini in: Exhibition Catalogue, Castello di Volpaia, Splendente, 1992, p. 17).  Indeed, while correspondent to the dialogue with the materiality and flat surface of the canvas, most famously associated with Fontana, there is evidence to suggest that Fontana's first Spatial Concept was preceded by a visit to Scarpitta's studio in 1957.  Piero Dorazio later wrote of this event: "when Fontana came to Rome I took him to Salvatore's studio... The next year I went to visit Fontana and his studio was full of cavases with the famous slashes, which could only have been suggested by the swathing bands of Scarpitta." (Piero Dorazio, 'For Salvatore Scarpitta', in: Exhibition Catalogue, Arbur, Centro d'Arte Arbur, Scarpitta, 2000, pp. 61-62). Often overlooked, Scarpitta's involvement in the cultivation of a new artistic generation principally attributed to the pioneering work of Fontana and spearheaded by the Arte Povera movement, should therefore not be underplayed. 

Nonetheless, ostensibly appearing to presage the autonomous metaphysicality of Arte Povera and the earlier work of Manzoni, whose use of achromatic kaolin is presaged by Scarpitta's heavily impregnated swathes of monochromed canvas, Scarpitta was uninterested in an intellectual anti-colourism and tautological detachment. Instead the call for myth and tradition evidenced by his titling, in this instance The Corn Queen, alongside Moby Dick, and The Flying Dutchman, both from 1958, evidence a relationship with myth, tradition, and the great art of the past: the achromatic chiaroscuro of the weighted canvas swathes evoke the monumentality of marble statuary, whilst the bandaged modulations of light and shadow recall Leonardo's repeated studies of luminous folds of drapery and the Flemish obsession with reproducing cloth realistically. Moreover, present in what Scarpitta identified as the "human content" of his work is an extraordinary tension: "His work is the reflection of man's condition in our times, it is the testimony of the continuous constrictions to which he is subjected, the constant obstructions set in his path and against all of which he must find a way of struggling." (Lorella Giudici, 'Salvatore Scarpitta's Totem Art', in Ibid., p. 13).  Correspondent to the reception of Burri's sutchered burlap Sacchi, these torn works communicate an emotional envelopment of wounds and scars testament to a post-traumatic response to the Second World War.  As described by Elena Pontaggi, Scarpitta's bandaged canvases represent "a battle ground without the screaming voices". (Elena Pontiggia, 'Salvatore Scarpitta, The Uniqueness of Expression', in Ibid., p. 85).  Executed on a grand scale, The Corn Queen shows Scarpitta to be exploring and pushing the canvas to its ultimate form as a medium for artistic expression. 

In 1958 an introduction to Leo Castelli in Rome proved invaluable for Scarpitta's career, prompting the artist's return to New York in 1958.  He was quickly recruited into Castelli's fold and, following exhibitions of works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, had his first solo show Extramurals in 1959.  Willem De Kooning bought one of the works on display, and through Castelli Scarpitta also met Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and others from the Pop art crowd. According to Scarpitta: "with Leo a great friendship was born, and a great, immediate interest in my work.  Leo and I were like brothers." (Exhibition Catalogue, Castello di Volpaia, Salvatore Scarpitta, 1992, p. 14). Belonging to the year that sparked a period of great artistic activity, and having been originally acquired directly from Castelli, The Corn Queen singularly bears witness to this highly significant and fruitful relationship; a monument to the magnitude of exchange between these two greatly influential individuals.