Franco Angeli © (1935 - 1988)
Of America, 1968

Of America, 1968
Signed and dated Franco Angeli 1968 on the reverse
Mixed media on canvas with veil
cm 60x70

Title and dimensions on the reverse

Artwork registered at the Franco Angeli Archive, Rome, with number P-241017/1208, as per certificate issued on November 2nd 2017

Blindarte kindly thanks the Franco Angeli Archive, Rome, curated by Maria Angeli, for having confirmed by email the authenticity of the artwork and for the help in compiling this sheet

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Franco Angeli (Rome, 1935 - 1988) is one of the key exponents of Italian Pop Art, known for taking part in the historical artistic movement known as Scuola di Piazza Del Popolo, an artistic experience born in the 60s in Rome, together with Mario Schifano, Giosetta Fioroni and Tano Festa.

In this important work executed in 1968 (which anticipates the artist’s journey to the USA by a year) Angeli recovers the iconography of the American eagle through a mixed technique on canvas with glauze. Among the various works that the artist undertook there was also that of upholsterer, and thanks to this experience he became an expert in fabrics and their uses also in his works. The eagle is a symbol strongly linked to American culture and it stands out in this emblematic work on a background of blue tones, also a direct reference to the American flag. The insert of the velatine, which covers the surface of the canvas, makes the subject hardly visible, as if it were a distant memory in time. The aim of Angeli is to use these lightweight materials to instill in the observer the feeling of looking at something impalpable and elusive, like a distant memory and, as Alberto Boatto writes: "covering his symbols with a veil Angels tended to alter the objective violence" ("Franco Angeli", edited by Andrea Tugnoli, 2011).