Filippo Panseca - Biodegradabile

Screenprint printed at Studio D Milano in 1972 in 100 numbered and signed copies by the artist.

Filippo Panseca (Palermo, 1940) founded the Gruppo Temposud in 1965. In 1968 he moved to Milan, participating in the Quadriennale of Rome, the Triennale of Milan, and the Venice Biennale. In 1970 he initiated Biodegradable Art, exhibiting at the galleries of Leo Castelli in New York, Lara Vincy in Paris, at the Naviglio Gallery in Milan, and at the Obelisk Gallery in Rome. In 1975 he attempted to produce online works, to be transmitted via satellite simultaneously to every part of the world. He carried out an experiment, unsuccessful, in Milan with Pierre Restany at Rank Xerox. On January 17 and 18, 1976, the daily La Repubblica offered readers for 150 lire a work printed in 330,000 copies. In 1979, in San Francisco, he developed and printed the first images with a computer. In Milan, 1980, with a monochrome computer, a camera and a digitizer, he processed a series of images that, when printed, were presented at the Naviglio art gallery in Milan. Subsequently he created a quadricromic computer and continued the research on photodegradable digital images presented on video at the Venice Biennale. In 1981 he installed a Photodegradable Victory (Vittoria Effimera) on the hand of Canova’s Napoleon in the Courtyard of the Brera Academy, where he had taught since 1978. He currently lives on the island of Pantelleria, where he runs MediArtUniversity.