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Concetto Pozzati — Tutto di testa
Concetto Pozzati

Tutto di testa

2000

Tutto di testa presents three interlocking figures rendered in bold, expressive line against a cool gray ground, their forms built from a vocabulary of simplified arcs, circles, and schematic marks that recall both ancient votive imagery and the raw energy of street art. The central face, drawn in black enamel with an almost ceremonial directness, floats within a circular outline that places it in dialogue with two flanking figures executed in white chalk-like strokes over dense black. These flanking presences, one more totemic and frontal, the other more naturalistic yet equally stripped of illusionistic detail, create a rhythmic counterpoint that animates the entire surface. Two gold discs, one at the top and one at the bottom center, anchor the composition vertically and introduce a note of radiance and symbolic weight, while a horizontal band of lavender at the lower edge grounds the arrangement with an unexpected chromatic warmth. Concetto Pozzati, a central figure of Italian Neo-Dada and the Nuova Figurazione movements and a founding member of the Gruppo 63, spent decades exploring the tension between sign and image, between the legibility of the icon and the opacity of language. In Tutto di testa, painted in 2000 near the close of a career that stretched from the heady experimentalism of the 1960s through decades of sustained critical engagement, that tension reaches a kind of earned simplicity. The title, which carries the double sense of stubbornness and of mental preoccupation, suggests a work that reflects on the act of thinking itself, on the persistent, sometimes obsessive nature of image-making and portraiture. The three heads can be read as aspects of a single consciousness, as a crowd, or as a meditation on the multiplicity concealed within any individual presence. The 70 by 80 centimeter format gives the work an intimate scale that rewards close looking, drawing the viewer into the specificity of each line and the subtle textural interplay between acrylic ground and enamel drawing. For collectors, this painting represents Pozzati at his most concentrated and assured, distilling a lifetime of conceptual and painterly inquiry into a composition of remarkable directness and lasting visual resonance. It holds its place confidently within the broader context of European figurative painting of the late twentieth century.

Medium
Acrylic and enamel on canvas

🔨 Auction Lot

Martini Studio d'Arte: Modern And Contemporary Art

June 10, 2026

Estimate: €1,000 to €2,000

Lot 231

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About this work

Concetto Pozzati, Tutto di testa, 2000

Tutto di testa presents three interlocking figures rendered in bold, expressive line against a cool gray ground, their forms built from a vocabulary of simplified arcs, circles, and schematic marks that recall both ancient votive imagery and the raw energy of street art. The central face, drawn in black enamel with an almost ceremonial directness, floats within a circular outline that places it in dialogue with two flanking figures executed in white chalk-like strokes over dense black. These flanking presences, one more totemic and frontal, the other more naturalistic yet equally stripped of illusionistic detail, create a rhythmic counterpoint that animates the entire surface. Two gold discs, one at the top and one at the bottom center, anchor the composition vertically and introduce a note of radiance and symbolic weight, while a horizontal band of lavender at the lower edge grounds the arrangement with an unexpected chromatic warmth. Concetto Pozzati, a central figure of Italian Neo-Dada and the Nuova Figurazione movements and a founding member of the Gruppo 63, spent decades exploring the tension between sign and image, between the legibility of the icon and the opacity of language. In Tutto di testa, painted in 2000 near the close of a career that stretched from the heady experimentalism of the 1960s through decades of sustained critical engagement, that tension reaches a kind of earned simplicity. The title, which carries the double sense of stubbornness and of mental preoccupation, suggests a work that reflects on the act of thinking itself, on the persistent, sometimes obsessive nature of image-making and portraiture. The three heads can be read as aspects of a single consciousness, as a crowd, or as a meditation on the multiplicity concealed within any individual presence. The 70 by 80 centimeter format gives the work an intimate scale that rewards close looking, drawing the viewer into the specificity of each line and the subtle textural interplay between acrylic ground and enamel drawing. For collectors, this painting represents Pozzati at his most concentrated and assured, distilling a lifetime of conceptual and painterly inquiry into a composition of remarkable directness and lasting visual resonance. It holds its place confidently within the broader context of European figurative painting of the late twentieth century.

Medium
Acrylic and enamel on canvas
Year
2000
Seen at
Martini Studio d'Arte

Related themes

Sign And Image, Neo-Dada, Multiple Figures, Male Artist, Mixed Media, Street Art Influence, Avant-Garde, Italian Artist, Late Career Work, Black And White, Gold Accents, Large Format, Cool Gray Palette, Contemporary Art, Abstract Figurative, Symbolic Imagery, Totemic Art, Figurative, Face And Portrait, Nuova Figurazione, Enamel On Canvas

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