Franz
Damiano BERTOLI: artist
These four [2014/0156, 2014/0158, 2014/0159] large drawings have been described as ‘re-drawn posters’, since they present Italian political slogans and historical newspaper headlines rendered in bold typographic forms through the garish colours and asymmetrical patterning that marked the vocabulary of the renowned Milan design and architecture group Memphis, popular in the 1980s. In this way, these works aim to reconnect Memphis’ original subversive aesthetics with Italian urban activism and radical politics from which the group’s ideas found their roots. More specifically, Memphis’ radical design links with the political radicalism of texts drawn from the Italian Autonomia movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They also provide visually lush and graphically complex representations of Bertoli’s interest in collage forms and recontextualising historical events which marks his broad practice in sculptural assemblages and installation.
Title
Franz
Artist/Maker and role
Damiano BERTOLI: artist
Date
2012
Medium
pencil on paper
Measurements
119.5 x 84.5 cm
119.2 x 84 x 4 cm (framed)
119.2 x 84 x 4 cm (framed)
Credit line
Purchased through the Sir Claude Hotchin Art Foundation, The Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 2014
The State Art Collection, The Art Gallery of Western Australia
Accession number
2014/0157