Two Warhol masterpieces from the Cerruti Collection coming to Castello di Rivoli

Andy Warhol. Two Masterpieces from the Collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti, this is the title of the exhibition that will be staged at the Rivoli Castle from January 22 to April 22, 2019.

Curated by Fabio Belloni, the show presents for the first time at this exhibition venue the works by Andy Warhol kept at Villa Cerruti in Rivoli, a mansion built by the Turin-based entrepreneur to house his collection: most of them are works from his maturity. Hélène Rochas is one of four paintings the celebrated artist had dedicated in 1975 to the former French model and former head of the eponymous perfume company, known for enterprise as much as sophisticated elegance. The work came about after a Polaroid portrait session: having chosen the shot, Warhol had instructed his assistants to silkscreen it on a canvas already painted with broad strokes of acrylic color, in this case with a green dominant. The transition from the photo to the silkscreen cancelled any chiaroscuro value, while the figure-background relationship cedes its definition to play with the ambiguous interpenetration between planes. The work belongs to the so-called Celebrity Portraits, commissioned paintings begun in 1972, when the artist had returned to painting after years of film experimentation.

Made in 1982, The Poet and His Muse, on the other hand, belongs to the cycle dedicated to Giorgio De Chirico and multiplies four times on the same canvas one of his 1959 works with old-fashioned paludated mannequins. Warhol had always admired the master of metaphysics: he had even met him on several occasions during his Italian sojourns, in Rome and Venice. Yet it was only that year, after visiting the major retrospective commissioned by William Rubin at MoMA, that he had decided to pay homage to him. It was not just yet another quotation, but a real tribute to the man who was a true precursor for Warhol: “De Chirico repeated the same images all his life. I think he did it not only because collectors and art dealers asked him to, but because he felt like it and he considered repetition a means of expression. That’s probably what we have in common-the difference? What he repeated regularly year after year, I repeat on the same day in the same painting.”

The exhibition is organized with the support of the Francesco Federico Cerruti Foundation for Art.

For info: www.castellodirivoli.org

Hours: Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Mondays.

Image: Andy Warhol, Hélène Rochas (1974, Fondazione Federico Cerruti per l’Arte collection, Long-term Storage at Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli - Turin) © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc. by SIAE 2019

Two Warhol masterpieces from the Cerruti Collection coming to Castello di Rivoli

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