Poster

Aurelio Amendola - Andy Warhol poster small

Andy Warhol, the Factory, New York, 1977

In Aurelio Amendola’s portrait of Warhol, donated to the Uffizi by the famous photographer, the meeting between the two artists is like a diapason and, from the memories of Amendola himself, we know that the meeting was undertaken without an exchange of words due to the linguistic barrier, though we can follow the dynamics of the roles of director and actor. And so surprisingly the most desecrating protagonist of Pop Art, who had even dipped into fluorescent colour for his portraits of himself and others, is immersed in the rigour of black and white, and is transfigured into an almost mystic dimension. So here is Amendola’s Warhol: as silent and solemn as a timeless idol, dry, torn from the comfort of shade by a chilly light – a few but cutting strokes of white that seem like strokes of a scalpel, and resemble the characteristics of the inert material of the sculpture in the background. The great dark pool in which is immersed the left side of the face is soaked in tragedy. The chiaroscuro of this suffering physiognomy seems the metaphor for a passage between a more brilliant life and the mystery of death, the graphic transposition of an existence often passed under blinding spotlights that is suddenly attracted by the nothing/black of an unrecognisable beyond. And yet the image transcends any pedantic aim, and instead sublimates and humanly pities the unreachable loneliness of the subject."
- Eike D. Schmidt
In Andy Warhol fotografato da Aurelio Amendola. New York 1977 e 1986, essays by E.D. Schmidt, A. Natali and W. Guadagnini, exhibition catalogue (Firenze), Bologna 2016, p. 5.