Frittelli arte contemporanea is pleased to present the exhibition Pino Pascali. Disegnare una fotografia [Drawing a Photograph], curated by Roberto Lacarbonara, in collaboration with the Pino Pascali Archive of Graphic Works (Florence), Pino Pascali Foundation (Polignano a Mare) and the photography archives of Claudio Abate (Rome), Elisabetta Catalano (Rome), Marcello Colitti (Rome), and Ugo Mulas (Milan). 

In the extraordinary hotbed of experimentation in animation that characterized the early days of advertising on Italian television in the 1950s and 60s, Pino Pascali (Bari, 1935 – Rome, 1968) represents a disruptive force of innovation in narration, image, and the dynamism of the field, through an ironic and, at times, sophisticated approach that reveals great invention and brilliance.

The recent discovery of the entire sequence of drawings for Intermezzo 23 – a short animation made by Pascali in 1966 for the production company Lodolo Film, intended for the newly launched television advertising intermission reel on RAI 2 called Intermezzo – is at the origin of this exhibition which, for the first time, brings together the entire process from the conception, to the design and graphic development of the film, showing all of the 51 entirely reconstructed scenes, composed of acrylic paintings on acetate, and graphite drawings on paper. 

The protagonists of this curious play created by Pascali are the notable Postero's, characters from an improbable “archaic future” engaged in the discovery of archeological objects dating “in ten thousand years ago”. This story of a “failed photograph” - told through a stop-motion animation depicting the hilarious attempts to create, in vain, a realistic portrait of a pompous client - represents an opportunity to investigate Pascali's frequent use of the photographic medium, observing how the artist operated both in front of and behind the lens: as an actor on film, as a performative interpreter alongside his sculptures, as a photographer capturing images for an advertising campaign, or – as in the case of Intermezzo 23 – as an illustrator attempting to “draw a photograph”. 

The story of this “non-photograph” becomes the starting point and occasion for investigating Pascali's frequent recourse to the photographic medium, observing how the artist operated, on multiple occasions, on this side or on the other side of the lens: as an actor posing for a film, as a performer alongside his sculptures, as a photographer capturing images for an advertising project, or as - in the case of Intermezzo 23 - an illustrator engaged in “drawing a photograph”.

Alongside Postero's sketches and a selection of drawings characterized by the use of photographic supports, techniques and materials - films, emulsion papers, enlargements, contact prints, photograms, photopaintings - the exhibition proposes a collection of shots from the Fondazione Pino Pascali in Polignano a Mare, directly taken by the artist between Rome and Naples in 1965-66, on the occasion of the production of an advertising carousel for the Cirio company. Also on show are film and photographic images of Pascali as Pulcinella and Pazzariello, two Neapolitan masks interpreted for the same carousel.

From the collaboration with the archives of great Italian photographers - who worked alongside Pascali during the years of his intense artistic production between 1964 and his death at the age of just 33 in 1968 - come the shots of Claudio Abate, Elisabetta Catalano, Marcello Colitti and Ugo Mulas: extraordinary images that testify to the happy and spontaneous performativity of the Apulian artist in front of the lens, not without wearing extravagant masks and disguises.