Signed and dated on the lower right.

There is paint and cotton peeling on all sides.
There is paint and cotton peeling on both the upper left and lower left sides.

Born in Rome, Antonio “Toti” Scialoja (1914-1998) initially began training as a lawyer before pursuing a career as an artist in 1937. Toti was a leading post-war Italian artist on the international art scene and was invited to participate in the 1949 Twentieth Century Italian Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Toti’s artistic career is defined by dynamic experimentation with gestures and materials, not just with their physical properties but also their associated philosophical qualities. Post-war Toti moved to Paris and was influenced by Neo-cubism and expression mark making. By the 1950s, Toti progressed away from Expressionism towards Analytical Cubism and pure abstraction. In the late 1950s, Toti began the first Impronte or “imprint” works using diverse techniques to transfer colored pigments from one surface to another. Foregoing a paintbrush, Toti used a rag to create impressions on various materials before exploring the imprinting qualities of paper. This artistic development was received with much acclaim and resulted in Toti’s work being exhibited at multiple Venice Biennales during the 1960s.

This work is an indicative example of Toti’s practice, with the rhythmic gestures creating a world of introspection. The mark making practice eschews conventional techniques and focuses on the relationship between the materials and process to transfer pigment between them. Toti pressed pigment across paper to the cotton fabric, abandoning the traditions of the easel, oil paint, and horsehair brushes as a rejection of historic constructed behavior. This new mark making process captures the impulse, immediacy, and randomness of life’s fluidity, nothing rigid, staid, or artificial. Toti stated the practice was grounded in "Knowing the way of the gesture, not the meaning of the gesture". The undulating gestural marks captures a singular moment between the artist, pigments, and media that can never been recaptured or repeated.

Marlborough Galleria d'Arte, Rome