In Cortina d'Ampezzo, an exhibition illustrates the relationship between Mario Schifano's art, cinema, TV

Mario Schifano, one of the most revolutionary and charismatic figures in 20th-century Italian and international art, is the protagonist of an exhibition at the Farsettiarte gallery in Cortina d’Ampezzo. The exhibition recounts the intense artistic and human parabola of the "Puma Painter," a nickname coined by Goffredo Parise to describe the elegance and explosive energy that characterized his creative genius.

Schifano, dubbed “the Italian Andy Warhol,” shared with the father of Pop Art an innovative artistic language and an extraordinary ability to reinterpret modernity. He attended Warhol’s Factory and in 1963 participated in the famous New Realists exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, exhibiting alongside icons of Nouveau Réalisme such as Christo and Mimmo Rotella. Warhol himself, in a famous statement, said that, given the choice, he would have liked to be reborn as Mario Schifano.

“TV Landscapes” and the Aesthetics of Images.

Prominent among the works on display in Cortina are the famous TV Landscapes, created in the 1970s. In these canvases, Schifano transferred fragments of television images through the technique of photographic emulsion, using bright, fast-drying industrial enamels that allowed him an intense and innovative production. Among the masterpieces on display are VIDEO 18 and VIDEO 13, both made in 1971.

Marco Meneguzzo, a scholar of the artist’s oeuvre, recalls that Schifano lived immersed in an incessant flow of images: in his home, switched-on televisions scrolled nonstop, offering an inexhaustible source of inspiration. The exhibition also features an extraordinarily rare work: the Painted Film Machine, which testifies to Schifano’s deep connection with cinema. “Schifano worked on images,” says Meneguzzo. “Around him there were always images. In fact, it is known that in the master’s house there were always televisions on, silent, but with a constant flow of images, of any kind.”

Between music and cinema: a multifaceted artist

Schifano’s passion for the visual arts was intertwined with his passion for film and music. He was close friends with the Rolling Stones and collaborated with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on the film Trilogy for a Massacre. The famous song Monkey Man is dedicated to him. In the Italian music scene, Schifano was a pioneer of multimedia experiences. With his psychedelic group, Le Stelle di Mario Schifano, he produced Italy’s first multimedia liveshow in 1967 at the Piper Club in Rome. At the same time, he established himself as a central figure in Italian underground cinema, signing three experimental films, Satellite, Humano non umano and Franco Brocani’s Trapianto, consunzione e morte.

Like Warhol in New York, Schifano took Italian independent cinema to new horizons, experimenting with deliberately crude framing, fragmented montages and an unstructured narrative that addressed social and political issues.

After two decades of fervent artistic activity, Schifano inaugurated the 1990s with a new exploration of the possibilities offered by digital technologies. His exhibition Divulgare, hosted at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, marked a turning point: the large paintings he created combined the dreamlike dimension of the unconscious with television and satellite images. The works addressed urgent issues such as the environment and war, marking a profound reflection on the interaction between man, technology and reality. Schifano thus emerges as a visionary capable of spanning painting, film and music, building an imagery that still continues to excite and inspire today.

For all information, you can visit Farsetti’s official website.

In Cortina d'Ampezzo, an exhibition illustrates the relationship between Mario Schifano's art, cinema, TV

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