MATERIALS: Military backpacks on iron plate
DIMENSIONS: 100 × 70 × 15 cm
INSCRIPTIONS: Dated, titled and signed on the verso, upper right: ‘1998 / “Fuori sacco” / Fabio Mauri’
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Private collection, Rome
CATALOGUE: PT_1998_541
Two military backpacks, one on top of the other, hang off a sheet of black iron. The lower one cotains a few items; the upper one is empty. Fuori sacco is a slang term in Italian for a ‘correspondence, or mailing of correspondence (spec. newspapers, urgent packets, despatches from newspaper correspondents, etc.) kept outside the mailbag to be delivered more quickly, generally by hand, to the intended recipient upon arrival.’ (Treccani Encyclopaedia). This work was made for the ‘Picnic o Il buon soldato’ exhibition (inv. 3204).
1998, Castelluccio di Pienza (Siena), Galleria La Tartaruga, Picnic o Il buon soldato, 5 September – 11 October, curated by Benedetta Origo, Plinio De Martiis.
1999, Barcelona, Fundació “La Caixa”, La meva cosina Marcella i la guerra civil, 29 January – 21 March, curated by Martí Peran.
2013, Venice, Galleria Michela Rizzo, Fabio Mauri. Picnic o il buon soldato, 23 September – 14 December.
2014-2015, Rovereto (Trento), Mart – Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, La guerra che verrà non è la prima, 4 October – 20 September.
2015-2016, London, Hauser & Wirth, Fabio Mauri. Oscuramento. The wars of Fabio Mauri, 11 December 2015 – 6 February 2016, curated by Olivier Renaud-Clément.
Fabio Mauri. Picnic o il buon soldato, exhibition catalogue, Galleria La Tartaruga, Castelluccio di Pienza (Siena), edited by Plinio De Martiis (San Quirico d’Orcia, Siena: Editrice DonChisciotte, 1998), p. 48 (ill.).
