Halter 2

‘These works impressed me for their originality and for their value as an extension of his experience of a painter; they represented the first case of a step forward after the provocation of Burri. So when Fontana came to Rome I took him to Salvatore’s studio … The next year I went to visit Fontana and his studio was full of canvases with the famous slashes, which could have only been suggested by the swathing bands of Scarpitta’ – P. Dorazio

Within the complex construction of Halter 2 (1961), roughly hewn from coarse strips of twisted bandages, Salvatore Scarpitta undertakes an astute examination of the nature of painting in the modern age. By disrupting not only the physical integrity of the canvas, but also its traditional function, the artist directly and dramatically challenged artistic convention and repurposed it for a new generation. Here, Scarpitta reconfigures the orthodox relationship between stretcher and support by releasing the potential of the canvas to produce a unique lattice of vertical and horizontal strips of material which literally pulls the surface of the work apart. With their dramatic three-dimensionality, these crosshatched strips of grey and ochre fabric begin to blur the lines between painting and sculpture. One of the most significant examples of the artist’s work, Halter 2 comes with the distinguished provenance of having once been in the collection of the American writer and critic B.H. Friedman. A relentless champion of the artist’s work, Friedman owned several of Scarpitta’s most significant pieces including Moby Dick (1958) and Racer’s Pillow (1963), both of which he bequeathed to Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

The impetus for Scarpitta’s distinctive style was said to have come from the birth of his daughter, Lola. Scarpitta took the bands of cloth that he used to swaddle his new-born baby and dipped them in glue to stiffen them before wrapping them around a wooden stretcher. On seeing this innovation fellow artist Piero Dorazio declared ‘[t]hese works impressed me for their originality and for their value as an extension of his experience of a painter; they represented the first case of a step forward after the provocation of Burri. So when Fontana came to Rome I took him to Salvatore’s studio … The next year I went to visit Fontana and his studio was full of canvases with the famous slashes, which could have only been suggested by the swathing bands of Scarpitta’ (P. Dorazio, quoted in L. Sansone, Salvatore Scarpitta: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1, Milan 2005 p. 68).

With his dramatic move away from the traditional use of canvas, Scarpitta was part of the movement of avant-garde artists in Europe who sought to find a new direction for art after the destruction wrought by the Second World War. He found himself associating with artists such as Alberto Burri and Piero Dorazio, and even Cy Twombly (with whom he shared a studio between 1957-58), all of whom influenced Scarpitta’s work, and were in turn often influenced by it. Cesare Vivaldi, the Italian poet and art critic, praised Scarpitta’s innovative technique as a dramatic advance on centuries of classical European artistic tradition: ‘Canvas: twisted, stretched, slashed, ripped taut as the hood on an ancient touring car, as the cover of a prairie schooner, swollen as a sail flapping in the wind, rigid as bandage, cheerful as tablecloth stained during a convivial feast … this alpha and omega of the post-medieval painter and of the modern artist is here in Scarpitta elevated to the material with which he works’ (C. Vivaldi, Salvatore Scarpitta, Quaderni di Arte Attuale, Rome, 1959).

Often described as the bridge between American Pop and Arte Povera, Scarpitta was born in Italy but raised in the United States before returning to Europe to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. His work became a synthesis of the European avant-garde and the American bravado that came to characterise the period after the War. Halter 2 was produced during a pivotal period of his career and encapsulates the energy and dynamism that characterised the post-War period, marking Scarpitta out as one of the most innovative and influential artists of his generation.