Mario Schifano. I’m on fire!”
Works from the Ovidio Jacorossi Collection returned from the fire.
From 20 December 2021 to 31 March 2022
Noble Floor, Palazzo Sant’Elia
Mario Schifano is one of the leading exponents of European Pop Art. Like all the artists of that pleasure-loving and revolutionary period which was the 60s of the last century, Schifano uses a language rich in contents and expressive forms typical of mass communication and so-called popular culture. He fully lives his time and the desire to embark on new paths and challenges by interacting with the media, with rock and pop bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, experimenting with drugs, traveling with curiosity between London and New York and mastering marketing techniques, thus transforming his works into icons of a new world and a new art.
The exhibition “Mario Schifano. I’m on fire!” Works from the Ovidio Jacorossi Collection returned from the fire will be inaugurated at Palazzo Sant’Elia on 19 December 2021, at 5.30 pm, and will remain on display until 31 March 2022 .
The approximately thirty works belonging to the “Fuochi dell’Arte”, set up in the splendid rooms of Palazzo Sant’Elia, mainly belong to the Jacorossi collection, created by the entrepreneur and patron Ovidio Jacorossi, a great art collector who died two years ago. These are also imposing paintings united by the common thread of a singular destiny: they were reached by the heat of a fire that broke out in 1992 in a carpentry shop in San Lorenzo, not far from where they were kept. The red thread is precisely the fire of that pyre, a fire that brings destruction and death or that generates eternal energy.
The irruption of chance, the unexpected, fate that reshapes the works with burns, making them magnificent. In fact, when the artist saw them contaminated by flames he exclaimed: “Don’t touch them, they are more beautiful than before”. Those burns therefore tell a particular story that this exhibition wants to remember.
Because the fire unknowingly transformed them by offering us new readings and points of view, taking them beyond the creative intentionality of Mario Schifano who, however, despite the burns, continued to recognize them as his. Thus aged and burnt by fire, never restored, they appear fearlessly in Palermo, with that burnt halo that has partially altered their colours. Returned to the world, reborn by the power of fate and fire.
At Palazzo Sant’Elia, in two rooms, a dozen works not belonging to the “Fuochi dell’Arte” we have mentioned will also be exhibited. In fact, it will be possible to admire ten paintings by Schifano created between the 60s and 90s. In this period of time, the Roman artist feels the need to broaden the horizons of communication, to get in touch with the public using new exhibition spaces and channels that are no longer those of museums or private galleries. The ambition was to “show off” in squares, airports and streets. Mario, the “cursed painter” of those years, knows perfectly well that he no longer lives in an elite society but in a mass society, in a society of images, optics, visuals. And he plays with images, “scribbles”, reflects: hence works such as ” Space “, ” Journey in projects “, ” Meteomalato “, or ” Coca Cola “, dedicated to the logo of the famous American drink, in which he uses a icon of the decontextualised mass media imagery.
From Tuesday to Sunday.
Closed on Mondays, except for 20 December 2021.
From 09:00 to 20:00, last entry at 19:00.
Tickets available at the ticket office in Palazzo Sant’Elia or online on the Vivaticket website
Full ticket €8.00
Reduced ticket €6.00
- OVER 65
- ORDER OF ARCHITECTS
- ORDER OF ACCOUNTANTS
- ORDER OF VETERINARY DOCTORS
- CRAL EMPLOYEES REGION OF SICILY
- CRAL UNIVERSITY OF PALERMO
- UNIVERSITY OF PALERMO
- ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS OF PALERMO
- ARCI PALERMO
- ANISA PALERMO
- TOURISTIC GUIDES
- PALERMO METROPOLITAN CITY EMPLOYEES
- ENROLLED IN THE INTITUT FRANCAIS PALERMO
School groups €5.00
For the Christmas holidays Palazzo Sant’Elia will follow the following times:
24 December 2021: from 09:00 to 18:00, last entry at 17:00;
31 December 2021: from 09:00 to 14:00, last entry at 13:00;
25, 26 December 2021 and 1 January 2022: from 16:00 to 20:00, last entry at 19:00.
06 January 2022: from 09:00 to 20:00, last entry at 19:00.
During these days all visitors will be able to access the exhibition with a reduced ticket of € 6.00.
Press release
Palermo: The exhibition “Mario Schifano. I’m on fire!” Works from the Ovidio Jacorossi Collection returned from the fire , curated by Marco Meneguzzo, will be inaugurated at Palazzo Sant’Elia on 19 December 2021, at 5.30 pm, and will remain on display until 31 March 2022 .
Mario Schifano, born in Homs in Italian Libya, Roman by adoption and Sicilian by father’s side, is among the leading exponents of European Pop Art. Like all the artists of that pleasure-loving and revolutionary period which was the 60s of the last century, Schifano uses a language rich in contents and expressive forms typical of mass communication and so-called popular culture. He fully lives his time and the desire to embark on new paths and challenges by interacting with the media, with rock and pop bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, experimenting with drugs, traveling with curiosity between London and New York and mastering marketing techniques, thus transforming his works into icons of a new world and a new art.
The approximately thirty works belonging to the “Fuochi dell’Arte”, set up in the splendid rooms of Palazzo Sant’Elia, mainly belong to the Jacorossi collection, created by the entrepreneur and patron Ovidio Jacorossi, a great art collector who died two years ago. These are also imposing paintings united by the common thread of a singular destiny: they were reached by the heat of a fire that broke out in 1992 in a carpentry shop in San Lorenzo, not far from where they were kept. The red thread is precisely the fire of that pyre, a fire that brings destruction and death or that generates eternal energy.
The irruption of chance, the unexpected, fate that reshapes the works with burns, making them magnificent. In fact, when the artist saw them contaminated by flames he exclaimed: “Don’t touch them, they are more beautiful than before”. Those burns therefore tell a particular story that this exhibition wants to remember. Because the fire unknowingly transformed them, offering us new readings and points of view, taking them beyond the creative intentionality of Schifano who, however, despite the burns, continued to recognize them as his. Thus aged and burnt by fire, they appear fearlessly in Palermo, with that burnt halo that has partially altered their colours. Returned to the world, reborn by the power of fate and fire.
As argued by professor Marco Meneguzzo , curator of the exhibition: “The important group of works presented in Palermo allows us to understand the artistic activity of Mario Schifano in the long period that goes from the end of the 1950s to the 1990s, exhibiting a part of the paintings from the “Fuochi dell’Arte” cycle and others from the “Disclose” review, large-format works created in 1990 for the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome”. The constant theme of Schifano’s pictorial poetics is the artist’s relationship with the world around him: space and time pulsate with shapes, images, sounds and colours. His art can be defined as multimedia, polyglot, polychromatic and without borders.
“The Sant’Elia Foundation is organizing an important exhibition which confirms the great national and international appeal of the city of Palermo. The citizens and the many tourists present in the Sicilian capital – declares the mayor Leoluca Orlando, president of the Sant’Elia Foundation – will be able to admire until next February the works of Mario Schifano, one of the most important Italian artists on the world scene of the Sixties, capable of influencing an era with his genius. Schifano came across the continuous search for new forms of pictorial experimentation and communication. And the works on display in Palermo, saved from the fire, offer new and interesting interpretations of a period that has marked popular culture. Lastly, on behalf of the Foundation, I would like to thank all those who have made it possible to create this exhibition which enriches the cultural offer of the city”.
In two rooms of Palazzo Sant’Elia will also be exhibited a dozen works not belonging to the “Fuochi dell’Arte” of which we have spoken. In fact, it will be possible to admire ten paintings by Schifano created between the 60s and 90s. In this period of time, the Roman artist feels the need to broaden the horizons of communication, to get in touch with the public using new exhibition spaces and channels that are no longer those of museums or private galleries. The ambition was to “show off” in squares, airports and streets. Mario, the “cursed painter” of those years, knows perfectly well that he no longer lives in an elite society but in a mass society, in a society of images, optics, visuals. And he plays with images, “scribbles”, reflects: hence works such as ” Space “, ” Journey in projects “, ” Meteomalato “, or ” Coca Cola “, dedicated to the logo of the famous American drink, in which he uses a icon of the decontextualised mass media imagery.
“The exhibition – explains Antonio Ticali – Superintendent of the Sant’Elia Foundation – is a reflection on the ability of an accidental event to break into the intentional creative process of an artist, contributing to the final product. The question we would like to share with visitors is: can a work of art be considered “finished” when it leaves its author’s atelier? Or do the fortuitous events that mature throughout its existence, adding to the intentional ones, end up being themselves an evolution of the aesthetics of the work, contributing to its uniqueness and unrepeatability? All we have to do is respect the author’s choice, certain that the users of the Sant’Elia Foundation, like those of other artistically lively cities such as Palermo, will be able to appreciate the suggestions offered”.
Schifano has always paid critical attention to the flow of images produced by the photographic and cinematographic technology that was the protagonist of his time. His gaze and his entire work are very current in this historical moment where the flow of sweetened images of social networks transform and confuse reality.
The artist experimented and lived on passions, perfectly representing the character he had sewn on, that of the total and cursed artist, with bizarre attitudes, triumphal outbursts and disastrous falls. “Mario Schifano, often considered the Italian Andy Warhol, is one of the most controversial and fascinating artists on the national and international scene – says Angela Mattarella Fundarò , vice president of the Sant’Elia Foundation – a painter who with his ingenious bring together the Mediterranean culture with the Nordic one”.
Here is the link for the press kit:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uD5YTTI3D9_eUqU69rZ18Xnt_lKclAmZ?usp=sharing
Joan Cirino
Press officer
Mobile: (+39) 339/2030137
Press review
– https://www.ilgiornaledellarte.com/articoli/col-fuoco-le-opere-di-schifano-sono-pi-belle/137972.html
– https://www.artribune.com/mostre-evento-arte/mario-schifano-im-on-fire/
– https://www.italy24news.com/entertainment/news/114694.html
– https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PP7t9GS5-NuswbZfdJAulhMzOza48X5x/view?usp=sharing
– https://www.facebook.com/reggianicriticadarte/posts/474535967622724
