Emilio Isgrò (1937) - Sans titre

The most seasoned collectors and connoisseurs will notice an incredibly rare peculiarity in this work by master Emilio Isgrò, namely this nuance of erasure—these words left partly visible only to those who are attentive and curious.

This is a distinctive feature of this screen print, produced in only 40 copies, making it a unique piece in the artist's cycle of paintings, who usually either erases the word completely or leaves it visible; instead, here we have the addition of the 'shading of the erasure'.

Emilio Isgrò, through erasure, was a great forerunner of the notion of the devaluation and decay of the word, of language, of the value that words hold—a phenomenon that today we are experiencing more than ever.
The master began to denounce in 1964 what is now commonplace and plausible; we notice this erosion of the value of the word, understood as an instrument for conveying ideas, adaptable in all its forms, from television debates, in the printed news, in dissemination by the mass media, and in the ever-smaller reading public we are creating.
Fewer words, less culture circulating, but aside from critical debates about art, what does this mean for society?
The ability to reason, and I would add the ability to reason with critical and independent thinking, is determined by the quantity and quality of the vocabulary an individual possesses; we cannot think beyond the words we know, just as a house cannot be built without all the necessary materials—the more material is missing, the less complete, stable, and feasible the house will be.
By limiting words, we also limit the concepts one can create and the ability to express them or to express oneself.
Once one understands the axiom that fewer words mean fewer thoughts, Isgrò’s work assumes a very high cultural and artistic value.
To hide words behind a redaction is a method of the master to arouse the reader's curiosity about the work, a way to urge us to go and explore beneath the word, to imagine what might be there in relation to what is left 'free' to be read.
A conceptual process, of discovery, of inquiry, of reflection on words and their arrangement, almost as if Isgrò were taking on the pedagogical role of a teacher, as well as that of an intellectual.
But Isgrò is not just a 'teacher'; he is also a creator of new syntactic and formal rules, a developer of new stories, and also a keen satirist. The maestro is what an intellectual should be—an awakener of consciences.
Emilio Isgrò thus places himself in the history of art as a guardian of the word and, by extension, of culture, a fundamental role that we increasingly need.

The dimensions of the artwork are 80 by 60 cm.


The provenance of the artwork is from the Galleria Grafica Manzoni, which issues the certificate of authenticity.