A wealth of comment by well-known critics and art historians, such as Alberto Boatto, Achille Bonito Oliva, Cesare Brandi, Giuliano Briganti, Maurizio Calvesi, Vittorio Rubiu; praise from fellow artists like Eliseo Mattiacci and Luca Patella and stories from gallery owners such as Fabio Sargentini.
“I have been close to many artists, some of them great, but in none of them have I ever encountered Pascali’s white heat, his blistering creativity, his power to mould materials into the pure gold of fantasy.”
Thus Cesare Brandi on the artist from Puglia, Pino Pascali (Bari 1935 – Rome 1968), who became an icon of the extraordinary vitality of Italian art in the 1960s, thanks to both the startling brevity and generosity of his life and his artistic development. Sculptor, scenographer and performer, Pascali brilliantly juxtaposed the mythical primary forms of Mediterranean nature and culture (its fields, sea, landscape and wildlife) with the forms of childish toys and adventure and the icons and fetishes of mass culture.
He transposed this imaginary world into concise, monumental forms, often produced using the most ephemeral of materials, supplying an original, critical response from Italy and the Mediterranean to new tendencies from the USA, such as Pop Art, and preceding the conceptual art of the seventies.