Schifano is considered one of the most important representatives of Italian Pop Art. In 1962, he begins painting excerpts from the logos of well-known American companies, such as Coca-Cola, Esso, and Cities Service. As with his Monochromi series, he takes these motifs from his urban surroundings. The logos come from the billboards and posters that plaster the streets of Rome during the economic boom.
Propaganda (1962) features the unmistakable Coca-Cola logo. The product’s enormous popularity makes it instantly recognizable, even in this heavily cropped detail.
The ambiguous title that Schifano gives to works like this is interesting: In Italian at that time, “propaganda” simply meant advertising, but it could also refer to political or ideological influence. Thus, the title can be read as a reflection on advertising strategies and as a commentary on the aggressive exports of the United States at that time.
In Tutta Propaganda (1963), Schifano combines the Coca-Cola lettering with an abstracted version of the logo of the oil company Cities Service. Next to it appear the number 5 and the letter D. Under the brand name “5-D,” Cities Service sold lubricating oil in cans, which was also imported to Roman auto repair shops.
Here, the pristine consumer aesthetics of the advertising images give way to a strongly painterly gesture. The surface of the canvas becomes a battlefield on which painting seems to declare war on consumerism.
In the fall of 1962, Schifano’s work Propaganda is featured in the exhibition New Realists at Sidney Janis Gallery in New York, which is considered groundbreaking for the emergence of Pop Art. Schifano’s inclusion in the exhibition came about through the efforts of the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend. She had seen his works in the early 1960s at Plinio de Martiis’s Galleria La Tartaruga in Rome and subsequently signed him as her first Italian artist.
A political undertone also resonates in Bisogna farsi un’ottica (Franco Angeli, Tano Festa) (1965). The titular lettering, which translates to “One Must Acquire a Perspective,” arches across an abstract landscape flooded with energetic red. Schifano alludes to the need to refocus one’s gaze on a changing reality— a particularly relevant thought on the eve of political protest movements. The dedication to his artist friends Franco Angeli and Tano Festa refers to the solidarity within the Scuola di Piazza del Popolo. This loose group of young Roman painters meets regularly at Caffè Rosati, Galleria La Tartaruga, and the Feltrinelli bookstore, all of which are located around Piazza del Popolo. Schifano lives just a few steps away. It is in this lively scene, characterized by exchange and a spirit of experimentation, that an independent Italian variant of Pop Art emerges.
