Elizabethe Peyton. A project for the castello

10 january 1999 - 16 january 2000

Curated by Marcella Beccaria

Personalities taken from history, the news, rock stars and friends from the art world are the protagonists of the eclectic gallery of portraits created by Elizabeth Peyton (Danbury, Connecticut,1965). The portraits are executed from video images and photographs taken from newspapers or shot personally by the artist.

The small formats of her canvases, drawings and watercolors recall the preciosity of ancient miniatures, while her constant dialogue with mass culture renews the tradition of American Pop Art.

The selection of exhibited works is devoted to Rob Pruitt, a New York artist and friend. Handsome and disdainful, Pruitt, like many of the young men painted by Peyton, becomes the very image of vanitas, the genre that, in the pictorial tradition, led to ecstatic contemplation, at the same time bringing to mind the inevitable passage of time.

[M.B.]