Street art enters the Uffizi collection for the first time with a punk-pop work

For the first time, a work of street art is entering the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence: it is a self-portrait by the London-based artist Endless, who is moreover a protagonist these days in Italy for having created a mural in Cortina d’Ampezzo on the occasion of the 2021 Alpine Ski World Championships. It is a work that sees his signature and image united with those of the famous couple Gilbert & George, inside their studio.

At the heart of the work, created in mixed media, is an original photograph taken by London-based photographer Noel Shelley according to Endless’s guidelines. The image shows both Gilbert & George in their usual living sculpture pose and Endless reading a copy of a magazine that covers his face: it is a reference toanonymity, a cornerstone of street art culture. The cover of the magazine depicts one of Endless’s most famous creations, Crotch Grab, a remake of the 1990s Calvin Klein advertisement featuring noted actor (and then model) Mark Wahlberg, later incorporated by Gilbert & George into a work of art displayed at their Singapore Utopian Pictures exhibition in 2015 and at the National Gallery in Canberra in 2018. That was the moment when Endless and Gilbert & George struck up a friendship.

Endless transformed the photographic image into a typical canvas format (a square of one meter on a side) by doubling it vertically, in a metaphor for the use of iterations and slogans in the advertising industry. The work now donated to the Uffizi includes graffiti lettering autographed by Endless, which lends rhythm to the composition. Created especially for the Uffizi,Self-Portrait was unveiled today at the museum’s Vasari Auditorium: the event, led by director Eike Schmidt, was attended by Endless himself and art critic Pasquale Lettieri. Endless, a well-known name in the British urban art scene, began making art using London’s walls as if they were his canvases-his reputation has since grown to simultaneously capture the attention of residents, visitors, and the media. Provocative and radical in his creations, Endless with his works offers a philosophical description of reality, exploring aspects of the world of fashion, advertising and, more generally, the dark side of modern culture.

“In his art Endless proposes an original fusion of punk and pop, which in the self-portrait extends to conceptual art,” says Eike Schmidt. “Observing, in the historical collections of the Uffizi, how the Medici grand dukes were eager to grab the latest (even the most daring) produced on the art scene, I think they would be happy today to see Endless’s work enter the collections that they so carefully initiated and augmented, centuries ago.”

“It is an honor to have my artwork added to the collection of the Uffizi Galleries,” Endless says. “Artists who come from a street-art background are rarely recognized by the most prestigious museums, particularly those with such historical and cultural carat. Street-art, after all, is art in itself and contains historical significance for our time and the ordinary people who live and move within it. I am proud of this achievement and hope that museum visitors will take an interest in this new kind of artwork.” Enthusiastic (and succinct) Gilbert & George are also excited: “It’s great news that this truly fantastic work of art will be added to the Uffizi collection!”

“Endless,” argues Pasquale Lettieri, “elaborates its symbolic dilations, moving from brush to spray, from luxury to pop, and mirrors two different perfections, one sapiential and tragic, lived on the sharp edge of heresy and madness, the other scientific, experimental, analytically elaborated, on the ridge of a perfectionism, paradoxically analogous, on simulation, bringing together the museum and the street, the modern and the postmodern.”

Street art enters the Uffizi collection for the first time with a punk-pop work

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