Salvo
b. 1947, Leonforte, Italy
d. 2015, Turin, Italy
1987
Oil on canvas
40 x 28 cm (15 3/4 x 11 1/8 in.)
Five boldly coloured rectangular building blocks conspire in this canvas to create a composition somewhere in between stylised architecture and geometric abstraction. Poised on a diagonal, the blocks dominate the composition, relieved only by two blue triangles suggestive of sky at the top of the canvas, and a brown corner of street in the foreground. Two dark disks beside the red and green blocks evoke the truck of the painting’s title. Seemingly discarded by the side of the road, they hint at an action taking place outside the time of the painting, before and perhaps even offstage and ongoing, leaving the viewer with an imaginative blank they are prompted to fill in. Though Salvo has pared the city down to its most elemental forms, the drama and detritus of urban life nevertheless pervade, inviting the construction of a narrative as personal as the artist's own vision of this unknown city.