Emilio Isgrò (1937) - Cancellature - 1969

It is a pleasure to present to you a very rare work by the master Isgrò from 1969.

The aesthetic simplicity of this 1969 piece rewards the temporal precocity of Isgrò's conceptual idea of the blackout. The year is fundamental, as the first sign of the “cancellation” Master Sicilian executed in 1964; consequently, our work is only five years away from a great graphic and conceptual artistic revolution. The correct comparison would be to see, and to possess, one of Fontana’s early “Spatial Concepts” or one of Burri’s early “Combustions.”

Emilio Isgrò, with the cancellation, was a great forerunner of signaling the devaluation and the decadence of the word, of language, of the value that words possess — a phenomenon we are living today more than ever. The maestro began to denounce in 1964 what is now everyday, likely, we notice this lack of value of the word, understood as an object that carries ideas, capable of being declined in all its forms, from television debates, to printed news, to dissemination by the mass media and in the increasingly smaller reading public we are creating.

Fewer words, less culture in circulation — but this, beyond critical debates on art, what does it mean for society? The ability to reason, and I would add the ability to reason with a critical and personal thought, is dictated by the quantity and quality of the vocabulary that an individual possesses; one cannot think beyond the words one knows, just as one cannot build a house without all the necessary materials. The more the materials are missing, the less complete, stable, and feasible the house will be.

By limiting words, one also limits the concepts one can create and the ability to express them or to express oneself. Understanding the axiom of fewer words equals fewer thoughts, Isgrò’s work thus takes on a very high cultural and artistic value.

Concealing words behind the cancellation is a way for the master to spark curiosity in the viewer of the work, a way to admonish us to go explore beneath the word, to imagine what might be 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 assumed the pedagogical role of a teacher, as well as 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 master is what an intellectual should be — a “reviver of consciences.”

Emilio Isgrò, therefore, 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 work is in perfect condition; there is only a very small physiological yellowing of the paper due to the 57 years the work has existed.

The provenance of the work is from Grafica Manzoni Gallery, which provides its certificate of authenticity.