Casa F. Schifano

Free entry

On February 1, 2024 in Lugano in via Cattedrale 3, the exhibition entitled  "Casa F.Schifano" opens from 5:00 pm.

The exhibition is set up in the spaces of the Marco Lucchetti Art Gallery. The exhibition is curated by Lorenzo Salvadori Amadei (Arf Roma) who promoted this event inside the Gallery to deepen the investigation, also conceptual, on the dialogues of off-topic artists of the Comic.

This exhibition, which inaugurates the new year of the Gallery, focuses on the language of comics and its form: a study that looks at kinetic lines and those images that evoke a movement without describing it.

In Francesco Schifano we find a real grammar of Comics, with the use of words, where, however, the protagonist of the story is the audience that looks at and animates pop environments with their thoughts. The time described is an infinite present, populated by human beings who disorder the environments in which they live but do not appear. Each work is a vignette that encloses an interior, an exterior or a group of objects, therefore a space that is never banal that ignites a reflection on postmodernism and its overcoming. In contrast to the still life that proposes a licked and glossy style, perfect, almost unattainable and that circumscribes a period: the end of the last century, even in the use of certain color pastes. Francesco Schifano surpasses the century by positioning himself in another style: describing, in the relationship between fiction and non-fiction, the simulation of reality of the clear line, with defined profiles of objects and absolutely full colors, as a life without nuances that presents itself for what it is. The pictorial technique used by the artist throughout his career, speaks of a concept of mannerist purism mocked by the form that is that of Comic. An artistic grammar that has now been rediscovered also in the light of a renewed interest in new realism and postmodern persistence, as a function of a desire to read reality pervaded by serenity.

Bio Francesco Schifano was born in Homs, Libya on December 4, 1937, and began his pictorial production in the mid-60s, using mainly oil paints. He married Mirella in 1967 (this is a biographical fact that the author emphasizes as essential). Mario's younger brother, Francesco, more shy and less worldly, worked all his life for the Motorway Company, relegating painting to passion, with a powerful talent that kept him alive in all phases of his existence and with remarkable results. Passing through various experimental periods, he relies on acrylic on canvas, creating a pop stylistic code, working above all on discolorations and unimaginable colors to describe the foliage of trees or meadows. Nature and trees, in particular, are the artistic point of contact between the two Schifano brothers, oaks and palm trees for example. But Francesco was struck and fascinated by the world of comics, which in the 70s and 80s, saw Italy as a real explosion and cradle for many artists and characters: from Mickey Mouse to Diabolik; from Skorpio to Lancio Story are the publications that pass through his hands. The architecture of the panels and the universal language of Comic contaminate it. Some paintings are the reproduction of cartoons by Walt Disney, in others we find a tribute to Roy Lichtenstein and again, the comic inspiration is only in the colors and stylization of the characters (Sky, Sea, Sand), or in The Kiss or in some nudes.

Francesco Schifano lives in Rome.