No. 14 / 20 · Movements, by Gastón Solís
Il Gesto Privato
transavanguardia of the everyday
Galleria Lucio Amelio, Sala di Consultazione · Napoli · 1983

The harlequin has been painted on stage, off stage, sleeping, drinking, in love, in mourning, and most often standing very still in a costume he did not choose. He has rarely been painted in the act of doing what every harlequin must do at some point in his morning before he can put on his ruff and go out and be funny.¹ The figure here wears the green collar and the white face and sits on the white throne in the same posture an emperor might. The painting is the size of an altarpiece. The subject is the size of a seated jester.
¹ Cf. Bruce Nauman, Clown Taking a Shit, 1988, lithograph, edition published by Brooke Alexander Editions, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acc. 199593. Nauman's lithograph, made five years after the present painting, approaches the same image through the conceptual idiom of his clown-suffering series of the late 1980s. The two arrivals — one painterly, one conceptual — independently confirm that the subject was available to the period.
Provenance
The artist’s studio, Roma; Galleria Gian Enzo Sperone, Roma, by 1981; private collection, Milano, 1981–1996; lent by the above to the Galleria Lucio Amelio, Napoli, for Il Gesto Privato, 1983; sale, Finarte, Milano, 14 May 1996, lot 87; the present collection.



















