The Bodybuilder. Pino Pascali, the prodigy artist who knew how to play

This article on Pino Pascali is published in issue 24-25 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 18 June 2024.

The history of contemporary art also has its own Sept. 11less catastrophic than the American one but still tragic.

It was 1968 when he died in a motorbike accident in Rome at just 32 years old Pino Pascali, prodigy sculptor (Milan, Fondazione Prada, until 23/9). Beautiful, sexy, ingenious and nice, in just three years of his career from his first exhibition, in 1965, at the Roman gallery La Tartaruga, until his death, he conquered the world of Italian art and even today the freshness of his work has not lost its relevance.

Even if he is five years older, his charisma rightfully puts him in the “27 year old” club, with Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jean Michel Basquiat, artists who were very young they had an exceptional influence on the culture of their time and future ones.

Pascali had worked as an illustrator and set designer for advertisements for Carousel and had designed the costumes for the legendary ballets Kessler twins. From the world of TV he brings with him the light spirit and the humor: his decapitated animals, the fake weapons, the suspension bridges, made with the steel wool that was used to clean the pots, Pascali’s art has a merit that today’s artists no longer have, the ability to be playfulnot rule or strategy.

On the works of this artist, who seemed to have come out or was ready for a Pasolini film, the dust of time does not seem to have accumulated. Pascali certainly left too soon. However, in three years he did everything he could do and to the best of his ability.

Cheerful, as if after a Carosello advertisement, he went to bed, leaving us some of his toys and some dreams.

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