Valerio Adami - The Great Wonderful: 100 Years of Italian Art New York Wednesday, May 13, 2015 | Phillips

The Great Wonderful: 100 Years of Italian Art

New York 13 May 2015 4pm

  • Provenance

    Galleria L'Attico, Rome
    Studio Marconi, Milan
    Private Collection, Milan

  • Literature

    A. Valtolina, Valerio Adami 1956-1963 Gli anni a Milano (The Years in Milan), Milan: Skira, 2015, p. 165 (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    In 1964 Valerio Adami was invited to exhibit in Documenta 3 in Kassel with a room of his most recent work consolidating his presence as one of the most cutting age painters of the time. Invito al Crash!, invitation to a crash, belongs to a series of work where the dialogue with American Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein is open and engaging, and yet still reflects Adami’s advanced revolutionary pictorial language, which will reappear some decades later in New York with the graffiti movement including the artist John Matos, street alias CRASH. To compare Adami’s work with Crash’s graffiti on the side of New York subway car is natural and not at all far-fetched. Adami’s innovative spirit was part of the zeitgeist of the time that led his generation to the 1968 student strikes and is nothing if not the “flintstone” of those street artists who, in the early 1980s, will transform the urban landscape of New York. In its timeless and crisp appearance Invito al Crash! expresses the youthful atmosphere that was generated by Italian Art in the 1960s.

Ο35

Valerio Adami

Invito al Crash!

1963
oil on canvas
70 7/8 x 54 3/8 in. (180 x 138 cm)
Titled, inscribed and dated "invito al crash 21.4.63 PARiS" upper right corner; further signed, titled, inscribed and dated "AdAMi INVITO AL CRASH! 21.4.63 PARIS" on the reverse.

Estimate
$60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for $62,500

Contact Specialist
Brittany Lopez Slater
Head of International Exhibitions
New York
+1 212 940 1299

Carolina Lanfranchi
Specialist
Milan
+39 338 924 1720

The Great Wonderful: 100 Years of Italian Art

New York 13 May 2015 4pm