MATERIALS: Wicker baskets, fabric and leather, German military helmet, cigars, composition of dried plants, enamelled jug, military motorcycle glasses, iron plate
DIMENSIONS: 130 × 53 × 50 cm
INSCRIPTIONS: Signed, dated and titled on the verso, upper right: ‘Fabio Mauri 1998 / ‘Nord Sud’ ’
PROVENANCE: The artist
COLLECTION: Fabio Mauri Estate, Rome
CATALOGUE: PT_1998_841
Three wicker military baskets with cloth and leather trimmings hang off a sheet of black iron: one of them occupies the lower part of the work; the two at the top are stacked on top of one another. Resting on the basket below are a German helmet, a tin jug containing a pair of 1942 G. Ratti motorcycle/desert military glasses as used by Italian and German colonial troops in Africa, cigars, and an array of chestnut husks, poppy flowers and cloves (the latter pointing towards a styrofoam ball). This work was part of the ‘Picnic o Il buon soldato’ exhibition-installation (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. La meva cosina Marcella i la guerra civil, exhibition catalogue, Fundació “La Caixa”, Barcelona, edited by Martí Peran (Barcelona, 1999), pp. 8, 21 (ill.).
Fabio Mauri, Io sono un ariano (Milan: Lampi di stampa, 2009), pp. 369, 372–373 (ill.).
