Wooden panel with a raised frame, covered in corrugated cardboard. An insert of the same material, its ‘undulations’ rotated 45° compared to the background, forms a silhouette reminiscent of the lower part of a torso in the centre of the picture. The title, Formazione di un pensiero anarchico, references other Mauri works from the 1970s (inv. 223), while the technique refers to a work from that same period, Ritratto dell’anarchico Galli (inv. 427), in which a different orientation of the corrugated cardboard between the figure and the background seems to reflect a tendency toward ‘continuous opposition’,1 something the artist attributed to his anarchic temperament.

1. F. Mauri in Fabio Mauri. Opere e azioni 1954–1994, catalogue of the exhibition (Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome), edited by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Marcella Cossu, Editoriale Giorgio Mondadori e Carte Segrete, Rome, 1994, p. 141.