Hellness

(1962/63)
This is the largest painting in the Cozzani collection, and was once spectacularly displayed on the ceiling of the dining room in the collector’s house. The invented word of the title refers to Dante’s Inferno, while the composition and dramatic intensity of the painting recalls Picasso’s Guernica in black and white. Sturm described Infernalezza as a type of inlay; the raw canvas remains largely visible, while the painting unfolds through layers of colour, drawn outlines and overlapping shapes, revealing the process of the artwork itself. Parts of human and animal bodies are depicted, with unlikely anatomies: as the spectator’s eye moves slowly across the surface, entire human figures can be recognised, and to the right can be seen a head of a horse. The work embodies Spur’s concept of a tension between abstract spatiality and figurative elements. Infernalezza is a dystopian and accusatory work, created in the year of the Cuban missile crisis and the threat of nuclear catastrophe.