Michelangelo Pistoletto

Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1988. 

Siena, Palazzo delle Pappesse, De Gustibus, 2002, p. 183, illustrated in colour

Caserta, Belvedere di San Lucio, Passaggi dalla Collezione privata di Ernesto Esposito, 2011, p. 2, illustrated

Bologna, Museo Mambo, Cara domain. Opere dalla collezione Ernesto Esposito, 2012, p. 2, illustrated 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals splash accretions and surface irregularities in isolated places, most notably towards the bottom left corner of the left panel and the top right quadrant of the right panel. There are fine hairline scratches in places, notably towards the top and right edge of the right panel and to the top edge of the left panel.
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A prodigious Quadri Specchiante, or Mirror Painting by Michelangelo Pistoletto, the present work immortalises the world-renowned shoe designer, Ernesto Esposito. A man with a refined taste and eye for aesthetics, Esposito began his career working with the prestigious shoe designer Sergio Rossi, and has since collaborated with the likes of Marc Jacobs, Chloé and Louis Vuitton. A creative visionary and art aficionado he cultivated close friendships with art world heroes, such as Andy Warhol – his painting of Esposito was the last ever portrait painted by the master of Pop – and amassed an art collection of international rank. Depicting an image of an agile Esposito running into view across a vast reflective surface, the present work captures Pistoletto's idiosyncratic ability to mirror the transitory nature of life. In his celebrated Quadri Specchianti the artist creates an entirely unique artistic language that synthesises the eminent and immortal dimension of the artwork with the unpredictable and fleeting conditions of existence. Created in 1988, the present work is a refined example of this iconic corpus – a striking paragon of that ambiguous threshold between art and reality that is so characteristic of Pistoletto's most important works.

Catching glimpses of his immediate surrounding within the vast reflective surface of the present work, the viewer becomes an active partaker in Pistoletto's unique illusory artifice. Catapulted into the forbidden realm beyond the picture plane he finds himself in a unique visual dialogue with the life-size image of Ernesto Esposito. Monumental in scale and utterly engrossing, the work distorts the boundaries between illusion and reality. Eluding traditional boundaries, the physical act of viewing and the illusory folly of the work blur and intermingle. As Pistoletto explained: "In traditional painting, representation and drawing covers the entire surface. This is a static aspect that has come down through the years as a univocal signal. It can correspond to the figure that I place on the surfaces of the mirror painting, a fixed signal, an image 'snapped' at a certain moment. But in my mirror paintings the image co-exists with every present moment... In my works the current time of the future is already included in the continuous mobility of the images, in the constantly renewed present of the reflection" (Michelangelo Pistoletto quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Centre, Pistoletto, Division and Multiplication of the Mirror, 1988, p. 31). 

Pistoletto first began his series of Mirror Paintings in 1961, experimenting with various techniques until perfecting the method in 1962. Photographic images, chosen to give the greatest sense of verisimilitude, were transferred onto tissue paper and then applied to a stainless steel background; the images were silkscreened onto the steel from 1971. Elucidating the genesis of the Mirror Paintings, the artist expounded: “I decided to make a better reflection with another material: polished stainless steel. There was objectivity in the reflected reality that told me how to realise the figure. I could no longer paint the figure as I did before: that was a pictorial solution, but it needed a photographic solution…” (Michelangelo Pistoletto quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Serpentine Gallery, Michelangelo Pistoletto, The Mirror of Judgement, 2011, p. 17).

At once a powerful example of Pistoletto's seminal examinations of the relationship between artist and viewer, and a compelling testament to the discerning eye of the clairvoyant collector, Ernesto Esposito, the present work is a true apogee of Twentieth Century avant-gardism.