Emilio Tadini (1927 - 2002) The murdered poet,... Lot 279

Emilio Tadini (1927 - 2002) The murdered poet, 1990 Oil on canvas 54.5 x 65.5 cm Signature: "Tadini" on verso Other inscription: "The murdered poet" on verso Provenance: Studio Marconi, Milan (1990); Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Conservation status. Support: 95%. Conservation status. Surface: 95%. A central point in Tadini's production is the dialogue between literature and painting, which led him to be an illustrator of writers both in the context of printed editions (ex multis, Louis F. Céline, "Scandalo negli abissi," illustrations by Emilio Tadini, edited by Ernesto Ferrero, Genoa, 1992) and in his own paintings. The work under consideration, datable to the late 1980s, probably represents Tadini's reflection on Guillaume Apollinaire's "The Murdered Poet," which appeared in Italy in several editions, including one for the types of "Il Formichiere," in Milan, in 1976, and, just in 1990 in two editions, for the types of Orsa Maggiore, Settimo Milanese, and Studio Editoriale in Milan. It is precisely the appearance in bookstores of these two editions along with the date of the work's sale to Veneto Banca (July 12, 1990) that allows the work to be dated to early 1990. Tadini shows a man in a green suit, clearly recognizable as a painter by the two tubes of paint in his pocket, carrying a hand to his side, has lost his balance and is about to fall off the canvas. A man in costume flees to the side of the painting, barefoot, on a gray base, with only a red hovel against the bluish horizon. Anatomical trait: the long legs, the small head. Are we thus witnessing a tragic scene? Probably Tadini was simply alluding to the desire to escape to the sea, in the very hot June-July of Milan (as art critic Rossana Bossaglia used to lament, "far hotter than August"), leaving aside intellectual commitments. Opposite, in fact, are the directions of the man in the falling suit and the muscular swimmer. This reading, which allows the work to be further dated to the passage between July and August 1990, provides a further link to the collection of novellas published by Apollinaire under the title "The Murdered Poet." After careful meditation on Rabelais' work, Apollinaire declares that he has invented a new literary genre, the "lyric-satirical" one. The long story that opens and titles the collection recounts the entire life of Croniamantal, Apollinaire's own alter-ego. "And what a life! An uninterrupted saraband of far-fetched, fairy-tale-like and hilarious situations, transposed with an iridescent and multifaceted stylistic chromaticity (it almost sounds like listening to the Gongs in "The Flying Teapot "); references to the contemporary are punctually deformed, clothed and transcended by a massive dose of connections to myths, legends and symbols that are emptied of their usual references and continually bent to Apollinaire's overwhelming hilarity" (the Cosmic Jocker, De Baser, March 21, 2017).