Multimedia collage on panel, enclosed within an iron frame open to the sides, concealed by a black metal plate that only reveals the lower right-hand portion, from which a rich composition of objects emerges, including: a vinyl disc, a manual hair cutter, a lead sheet and cut-outs of various pieces of paper and cardboard arranged on a mixed-technique pictorial surface based on gesso. In the introduction to his ‘Interno/Esterno’ exhibition-installation (inv. 3760), of which Collage monocromo 1 was part, Fabio Mauri wrote: ‘In its practice, “Painting” is a juxtaposition of different materials: earth, canvas, water, resin, wood, iron, silver, gold … Collage highlights the additive nature of artistic expression. Bringing together distant things (as per the by-no-means new authoritative opinion) is the prerogative of poetry […] The unity of this collage is realised precisely in terms of meaning (as well as in terms of material, obviously), in a way not disconnected from materials that are not art, nor do they intend to be art, as well as from that which is contrary to the meaning, or outside the meaning of the work at least. It follows that art is always close to its opposite. There it sits, a millimetre away from its opposite. This imperceptible boundary is the place of experimentation.’1

1. F. Mauri in Fabio Mauri. Interno / Esterno, catalogue of the exhibition (Rome, Galleria Anna D'Ascanio and Florence, Galleria Carini), edited by Lara-Vinca Masini, Alberto Boatto, Rome / Florence, 1990, p. 65.