Starting from the ‘80ies Gino De Dominicis was deeply fascinated by the myths of ancient Sumeria. In many works, he plumbed the mysteries of myths whose origins date back to the dawn of civilization, and he was inspired by the figures of Gilgamesh and Urvasi.

The protagonist of the most ancient epic composition in the history of humanity, Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk, a mythical city in present-day Iraq. He makes a long and difficult journey to find the secret of immortality. The experience of the quest is also part of the legend of Urvasi, an immortal creature loved by a mortal man.

The present work is an important record of this moment of the artist career: it has been exhibited at the two major retrospective exhibitions on the artist, the one at the Maxxi in Rome in 2010, and the

one the following year at the Cà d’Oro in Venice, as a special event of the Italian pavilion at the Biennale.

As stated by Italo Tommasoni, the warlike iconography of the Sumerian armed with a spear reaches in this painting an expressive peak of exceptional figurative consistency. The figure of the warrior, lateral to the viewer (like someone leaving or entering the stage), is solid with both feet firmly and parallel on a broad dais. Here the spear is pointing upwards in a position of truce rather piercing a body as shown in other paintings of the same cycle.

The light of a silvery planet and of the stars, with an eight – pointed star on the right -a motif that recalls the goddess Ishtar, the Great Mother, counterpart Sumerian goddess Inanna, goddess of beauty, fertility and love -, in a lapis – lazuli blue sky is reflected on the warrior’s head and on the ground, giving to all the scene a feeling of deep and fascinating mystery.