Work sheet
Technical data
| year | 2023 |
| purchase date | acquired in the portfolio |
| estimated current value in € | consult the updated Price Table |
| identification of the subject | abstract painting/reconstructivist work |
| materials and techniques | oil on canvas/mixed media/material work |
| measurements in centimeters cm | 100 x 80 x 1,8 |
| inscriptions | signature |
| inscription technique | oil |
| inscription position | on the back/bottom/right |
| transcription | Valvo |
| authenticity certificate | issued at the same time as the sale |
| art multiples | no print issued |
| state of conservation | intact work |
| location of the work | Rome · Italy |
| copyright | © all rights reserved · global · S.I.A.E. |
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Description of work
At the Antipodes
Showiness. Cheekiness. Kitsch taste. Definitely risky color combinations. Tacky drips of paint that smear the canvas in a mirror-like manner.
Street art. Pop art.
The work literally rubs against certain currents of the modern 20th century, just as it tends to recall some parallel phenomena of contemporary art, permeating itself with promiscuous references and quotations. A clear example of this: the anarchist symbol present on the right rib of the canvas. Banksy’s Anarchic rat. Or again: some anarchist-themed works created by the contemporary French Jean Mirre.
The series of overlapping squares, on the left side, naturally brings to mind the production of Andy Warhol.
The frenetic entanglement of a myriad of serpentine creatures: a clear homage to the work of Keith Haring.
But let’s remember, this is and always remains a work by Valvo.
The background of the canvas is a dark black. Between the latter and the polychrome quotes in the foreground lies the author’s typical semantics, well hidden.
So what does the artist want to express with this particular compositional structure?
Perhaps a sense of belonging to one’s time? To one’s own century?
Presumably yes.
However, this is an “independent” belonging: that is, disconnected from the concept of slavish imitation generated by the stimuli of the present.
The work, therefore, contextualises itself within its own period but, at the same time, denies the latter, and does so with the same means through which it momentarily becomes its spokesperson.
The message is evident and exquisitely contradictory: “I am part of this time. Likewise, I do not assimilate to it.”
The painting is permeated with the strong symbolism omnipresent in Valvo. An aspect that takes us backwards, one might say: to the dawn of time. The angled spirals, the cut circles, as well as the frenetic wriggling of the constituent elements, the vital and primordial jolt of the particles.
A complex of factors which, rather than winking at this or that contemporary trend, seems to be directly connected to a phase of cosmic genesis. Of planetary convolution. An “environment” in which fiery comets fall disastrously, flashes of light dart sparkling, material masses agglomerate with unprecedented violence.
From a jar of “Tomato Sauce”, one might say, to the dawn of life.
Even in this case the author does not deny himself, shrewdly using every available tool to then melt it, pour it into an original mold and forge it again with authentic features.
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