Mario Schifano 1960 – 67, Luxembourg & Dayan

Mario Schifano 1960-1967 at Luxembourg & Dayan takes a snapshot look at a period of extreme creativity from this notorious, yet often overlooked artist 

At the moment in the gallery world, there seems to be a resurgent taste for twilight figures who crossed lines, walked wild, and confounded careerist rules.Mario Schifano, a post-war Italian artist, is a case in point. 

The back-story

Tipped for greatness – he starred in a breakthrough 1962 show called New Realists at New York’s Sidney Janis Gallery alongside Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein – Schifano was a combustible mixture of avant-garde artist and glamorous socialite. Handsome, brooding and brainy, Schifano walked out with rock and roll royalty like Anita Pallenburg and Marianne Faithfull, and with tragic inevitability entered a into battle with addiction. One might say he squandered his early promise.

His work

Born in Libya in 1934, Schifano started to make art in the late 1950s and by the early 1960s he had settled into painting advertising logos, signs and his ‘incidents’: pictures of events like car crashes, prefiguring Andy Warhol.  In many ways Schifano was an Italian Pop artist, but equally he is seen as part of Italy’s post-war ‘arte povera’ movement, wherein artists used ‘poor’ materials – cardboard, material, plastic refuse – to make avant-garde art. Indeed, in the mid 60s, Schifano made paintings using house paint and his wide-ranging repertoire also included, photography and collages made of plastic. His interests really spanned genres and he was also a prolific filmmaker. Perhaps most interestingly, Schifano set up ‘Le Stelle di Mario Schifano’ (The Stars of Mario Schifano); an self-aggrandising band consisting of four musicians plus a light show that was something like an Italian version of the Velvet Underground.

The Exhibition

This show at Luxembourg & Dayan seeks to re-establish this extraordinary character as an artistic pioneer after, perhaps, his creative reputation was eclipsed by his social life. One could place it as part of the tendency that museums know as the ‘historic avant-garde’, and it’s great to see the gallery exhume an artist of such vigour and prescience. By focusing on a specific period in his career, 1960-1967, the show explores Schifano’s extraordinary energy and creativity through the range of techniques and materials that he experimented with during this era. Perhaps Schifano would have held onto his international fame had his life not been tragically cut short when he died in 1998 falling foul of his ongoing struggles. His reputation had been somewhat submerged, but this show goes some way towards reclaiming lost years.