Two covers of German magazine Der Spiegel dated 12 October and 30 November 1992, devoted to opposing political themes, reproduced in oil and acrylic on two large canvases. On one side was a portrait of Willy Brandt, Chancellor of West Germany from 1964 to 1987, known for his policy of openness toward the Soviet bloc that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, who had died a few days earlier. On the other was a close-up of hands raised in a Nazi salute in front of a burning building, leading into an issue devoted to neo-Nazi terrorism in Germany, ‘Morder von rechts’ (Right-wing Murderer). Made in 1992, the canvases were first exhibited at MACRO in Rome in 1997, accompanied by a wall inscription: Non esiste l’anima? Se la Germania ne ha due! As made explicit in a second line in a smaller font, the phrase was overheard on a train during a trip to Berlin in 1997. Long a focus of the artist as the cradle of Mitteleuropean intellectual culture, seven years after reunification, Germany was still traversed by dangerous currents, as represented here: ‘With the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a stolid outcry for the “end of ideology”; even art vented this cry. I trembled, I must confess.’1

1. F. Mauri in A. Bonito Oliva, Enciclopedia della parola, Skira, Milan, 2008, p. 415.