Written by Elisabetta Girardi

The television, the new mass media that also influences art

Imagine being in a completely darkened room, flooded only by an incessant stream of images coming from dozens of televisions, all muted. What might be the result?

For Italian painter and filmmaker Mario Schifano, it led to the creation of an innumerable series of works known as Paesaggi TV — born out of a crisis in painting, triggered by the success of the conceptual neo-avantgarde. This series includes the work Paesaggio TV, executed by the artist in the early 1970s, which will be sold at auction in our Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection on March 23, 2025.

Mass Media Preludes in Mario Schifano’s Artistic Production

It was during the 1960s and 1970s that Schifano began experimenting with new painting techniques by harnessing the power of television—a mass medium that had only recently arrived in viewers’ homes. He foresaw that humanity would increasingly live immersed in images, to the extent that even the artist would no longer draw inspiration from the external world, but rather the external world would seek him out through tuning in.

Auction 9 – Salmoiraghi Collection, Lot 67, Mario Schifano, Paesaggio TV

Through the Paesaggi TV works, the concept of the “flow of images” is refined—reality is constantly mediated by a filter that transforms it into an image. This process began with the Monocromi of the early Sixties, in which the edge, often rendered in a rounded form that delineated the image field, recalled the shape of a film frame or slide. It is, therefore, in the Seventies (although there were very early experiments dating back to 1969) that this concept crystallized, introducing new innovations into Schifano’s artistic production.

The first frames reworked by the artist come from shots taken in the United States in heart transplant rooms in Houston, in NASA laboratories, in Alamogordo, and in Los Alamos, giving rise to works such as Pentagono, Medal of Honor, and Era Nuclear. Subsequently, Schifano began to pictorially reinterpret images broadcast by RAI and other television networks.

Creative Process of TV Landscapes

The creative process behind the Paesaggi TV series aims to be quick and fleeting: the images, captured directly from the television screen, are embedded within the curvilinear frame of the cathode ray tube and frozen in a sort of indifferent state of meaning. The painting nearly withdraws, reducing the artist to mere splashes of transparent enamel, and causing the work to become depersonalized.

In these slightly blurred images—less sharp and brilliant than today’s standards—you can find clocks showing the exact time, still images of Italian cities with their names inscribed, quotations from art history drawn from the broadcast Maestri italiani del ‘900, as well as fragments, close-ups, details, and patches of color.

It’s not television culture that intrigues him, but rather the culture that develops from the television image.

Mario Schifano, the Biography of the Artist Behind Paesaggio TV

Born in Homs on September 20, 1934, Mario Schifano is widely regarded as a leading figure in Italian pop art. Many consider him the heir to Andy Warhol, whom he met during one of his trips to the United States while visiting the Factory (Warhol’s studio and gathering place for his collaborators). In 1962, he participated in the exhibition The New Realists, organized by the Sidney Janis Gallery, showcasing his works alongside key figures of Nouveau Réalisme such as Christo, Klein, and Mimmo Rotella. Moreover, together with the “cursed painters” (Franco Angeli, Tano Festa, etc.), he played a pivotal role in shaping Italian and European contemporary art.

Schifano’s artistic output ranged from the Monocromi —works characterized by one or two colors applied on packaging paper pasted onto canvas (influenced by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg)—to series dedicated to advertising logos (Coca-Cola and Esso), bicycles, flowers (a tribute to Andy Warhol), and nature in general.

Passionate about new technologies, in the 1970s he began transferring images captured on television onto emulsion-coated canvases, later retouching them with fleeting brushstrokes. This passion led him to be one of the first to experiment with integrations between painting and other art forms such as music, video, cinema, and photography, eventually incorporating computers to process images and reproduce them on emulsion canvases (giving rise to his Tele Computerizzate works).

Immersed in the pop culture of his time and drawn to the beat music scene, he collaborated with the band Le Stelle di Mario Schifano, which released an album in late 1967 featuring a cover he designed. He also created covers for other Italian groups like Equipe 84. In 1971, he directed a documentary film titled Umano non umano, featuring prominent figures such as Adriano Aprà, Carmelo Bene, Mick Jagger, Sandro Penna, Alberto Moravia, Keith Richards, and Rada Rassimov.

Schifano participated in several editions of the Venice Biennale, and in 1985 he was in Florence, where he painted La chimera—the inaugural work of the Etruscan exhibition—in front of six thousand people. He was also civically engaged, producing works in support of campaigns by Greenpeace, UNHCR, and many other volunteer organizations.

The final phase of his artistic production was marked by an exploration of media and multimedia.

Mario Schifano passed away in Rome on January 26, 1998, and is celebrated as one of the greatest Italian artists of the 20th century.

See also:

• Browse the catalogue of Auction 9 – Samoiraghi Collection
• The article dedicated to Rolex Milgauss