Enzo Cucchi (1949) - Mark Kostabi (1960) Biography
An exceptional exhibition curated by Achille Bonito Oliva and Lavinia Filippi is inaugurated at the Pio Monti Gallery in Rome in Campo dei Fiori, which will see a huge painting conceived by Enzo Cucchi and created by Mark Kostabi on display. Title of the exhibition is: “Who is your father?”. Enzo Cucchi wanted to forget by heart an image that appeared on his screen of possible iconography but decided, through dialogue, to communicate it to another artist, Kostabi, who took charge of it with his usual language but taking it within his own pictorial enclosure the other artist's input. The dialogue vaporizes in a four-handed drawing where both participate in a process of hybridization of the image with elements referring to two different iconographic universes, visionary that of Cucchi, inhabited by clouds and skulls, illustrative that of Kostabi, led towards a narrative explicit and modular.
The question posed by the four-handed drawing Who is your mother? finds its illustration in an image that summarizes the answer in the figure of the mother (Cucchi) and then reconstructs its own genealogical and anthropological tree highlighting the paternal figure (Warhol) but without drama in an iconographic universe, which has become advertising for painting. Thus was born the idea of representing an artist in his cradle, with brushes in his right hand and a bag of money in his left hand, in turn sweetly awaiting an embryonic artist. Enzo intervenes only when the drawing is finished, making some changes. He adds the red cloud that accompanies the flight of the Holy House of Loreto and modifies the embryo, giving the painting two spots of color. Mark and Enzo's drawing was then delivered to Mark's workshop, Kostabi World in Manhattan, which made a large oil on canvas and gave it a name. The title, Who's your daddy? it was proposed by Walter Robinsion, director of Artnet, during the television program invented by Mark and broadcast weekly in Manhattan.
