Emilio Isgrò (1937) - Sans titre

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

This is a distinctive trait for this silkscreen limited to only 40 copies, which makes it a unique piece in the painterly cycle of the master, who usually either erases the word entirely or leaves it visible; here we have the addition of the “fade of the erasure.”

Emilio Isgró, with erasure, was a great precursor of signaling the devaluation and decay of the word, of language, of the value that words possess, a phenomenon that today we are living more than ever. The master began to denounce in 1964 what is now daily, possible to foresee; we notice this lack of value of the word, understood as a vehicle object of ideas, declinable in all its forms, from television debates, to print news, to dissemination by the mass media and in the increasingly small reading society that we are creating. Less words, less culture in circulation, but beyond critical discussions about art, what does this mean socially? The capacity to reason, and I would add the capacity to reason with a critical and 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 a house cannot be built without all the necessary materials—the more the material is lacking, the less complete, stable, and practicable the house will be.

By limiting words, we also limit the concepts one can create and the ability to express them or express oneself. Including the axiom that fewer words equal fewer thoughts, Isgró’s work takes on an extremely high cultural and artistic value.

Concealing words behind erasure is a way for the master to awaken 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 inquiry, of reflection on words and their arrangement, almost as if Isgró were assuming the pedagogical role of a teacher, as well as that of an intellectual.

But Isgró is not only a “teacher”; he is also a creator of new syntactical 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 Isgró 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 work are 80 x 60 cm.

The edition number may not correspond to the photograph’s number.

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