Emilio Isgrò (1937) - Sans titre

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

This is a distinctive trait of this serigraph printed in only 40 copies, which makes it a unique item in the maestro's painterly cycle, who usually either erases the word entirely or leaves it visible; here we have the addition of the "nuance of the erasure".

Emilio Isgrò, with erasure, was a great precursor of noticing the devaluation and decay of the word, of language, of the value that words possess, a phenomenon that today more than ever we are experiencing.
The master began to denounce in 1964 what is now everyday, probable; we note this lack of value of the word, understood as a vehicle object of ideas, déclinable in all its forms, from television debates, in printed news, in dissemination by mass media and in the increasingly smaller reading society that we are going to create.
Fewer words, less culture in circulation, but beyond critical discussions about art, what does this entail in society?
The ability to reason, and I would add the ability to reason with a critical and truly personal thought, is dictated by the quantity and quality of the vocabulary that an individual possesses; we cannot think beyond the words we know, just as one cannot build a house without all the necessary materials; the more the material is lacking, the less complete, stable, and doable 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.
Including the axiom of fewer words equal fewer thoughts, Isgrò's work takes on a very high cultural and artistic value.
Concealing words behind erasure is a way for the maestro to spark curiosity in the viewer of the work, a way to urge us to go explore beneath the word, to imagine what might have been in relation to what is left "free" to be read.
A conceptual process, of discovery, of investigation, of reflection on words and their arrangement, almost as if Isgrò assumed the pedagogical role of a teacher, as well as that of an intellectual.
But Isgrò is not only a “teacher”; he is also a creator of new syntactic and formal rules, a developer of new stories, but also a keen satirist; the maestro is what an intellectual should be—a "wake-up call to consciences".
Emilio Isgrò thus positions 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 work are 80 x 60 cm.

The edition number may not correspond to the number of the photograph.

The provenance of the work is the Grafica Manzoni gallery, which issues the certificate of authenticity.