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Artist or Maker: Sandro Chia (b. 1946)

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Provenance: Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York.

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Exhibited: Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Collects Contemporary Art, November 1998-January 1999 (illustrated in colour, p. 61, and on the cover).

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Notes: Property from the Collection of Eugene Stevens

Sandro Chia, painter and sculptor, began his relationship with art through his strong appreciation of the works of Filippino Lippi and Masaccio. After having been formally trained in Italy, Chia travelled the world before returning to Rome in 1970 to focus on creating art. The work of Yves Klein was a great influence on the young artist, who for a while took an interest in Conceptual art. However, by the late 1970s Chia had moved to focus on figurative representational art and was one of the main protagonists of the Italian Transavangarde movement. This movement saw art as transcending the rigidity of the Avant-Gardes and the wealth of historical artistic tradition. Chia regenerates a driving flux of poetry, colours and myths borrowed from nomadic life and eclecticism in his work. First introduced to American audiences in the 1980s as one of the "three C's," with Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, these leading exemplars of Italian Neo-Expressionism, Sandro Chia rejected the conceptual approach in favour of paintings bursting with powerful colours. His Fauve-inspired colours and Picasso-inspired figures became the hallmark of his style. Chia said "Everything about concept and minimalism was so pure, we had to do something forbidden, impure and vital" (Chia, quoted in Sandro Chia, exh. cat., Milan 1992, p. 240).

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