
Estinti
1993
Executed in enamel and acrylic on canvas, this work presents a white silhouette of a long-necked dinosaur, rendered with loose, confident brushwork against a lush, explosively colored landscape. The creature, recognizable as a sauropod, is painted in stark white that presses forward from the dense greens, golds, and earth tones of its prehistoric environment. Trees loom with an almost menacing vitality, their foliage applied in thick, gestural strokes that animate the entire picture plane. The sky above opens in passages of cerulean and cloud white, giving the composition a sense of air and distance even as the vegetation crowds in. Notably, the painted wooden frame, rendered in the same green palette as the interior landscape, collapses the boundary between object and image, transforming the work into a unified pictorial environment rather than a window onto a scene. Schifano completed Estinti in 1993, during a mature period of his career in which he returned repeatedly to imagery drawn from mass media, natural history, and popular culture. The dinosaur, a figure that had saturated public consciousness through television documentaries and the spectacle of museum paleontology, becomes here something elegiac and strangely tender. The title, meaning "extinct" in Italian, frames the subject not as a triumph of scientific curiosity but as a meditation on disappearance. Schifano strips the creature of menace and complexity, reducing it to a simple white form that reads almost like a ghost, a trace of something immense that once moved through the world. The work sits comfortably within Schifano's broader practice of appropriating and transforming ready-made imagery through the physical urgency of paint. His brushwork never seeks to describe or document; instead it asserts the presence of the painted surface as a living thing, full of speed and spontaneity. For collectors, Estinti represents one of the more poignant expressions of Schifano's late manner, combining his characteristic visual directness with an unusually reflective subject. The integration of the painted frame further elevates the work beyond conventional canvas painting, making it a sculptural and environmental object as much as a picture. It is a work that rewards sustained looking, its apparent simplicity giving way to considerable depth of feeling and formal intelligence.
- Medium
- Enamel and acrylic on canvas and painted frame
🔨 Auction Lot
Martini Studio d'Arte: Modern And Contemporary Art
June 10, 2026
Estimate: €10,000 to €15,000
Lot 46
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