CORRADO LEVI (1936 ) [Two Tabloid Zines]

Sale 2677 - Lot 206

Price Realized: $ 219

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500

CORRADO LEVI (1936-)

[Two Tabloid Zines]
Large-format folded publications, one printed in purple ink and consisting of reproduced typewritten essays and typeset quotes combined at energetic angles and mixed with phrases printed from handwritten text; the other printed in pink ink and illustrated throughout; each tabloid has text on four pages that unfold into a large poster-format composition; each 12 1/4 x 8 1/2 in. when folded; 33 x 24 1/4 in. unfolded. Circa 1977.

Turin architect, artist & activist, Levi helped found the revolutionary queer political group, Fuori! (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano), which also published an underground magazine between 1972 and 1982. These rare imprints include some of Levi's work on the Renaissance Italian artist Jacopo Carrucci, also know as Pontormo (1494-1557). In particular, Levi was interested in the lost and unfinished frescoes for the choir of the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence, which Pontormo worked on the last ten years of his life. Pontormo's almost surrealistic approach and chaotic compositions of intertwined bodies in impossibly ungrounded poses present a strikingly modern vision that stands in marked distinction from other artists of his time. Levi saw Pontormo's work as deeply homoerotic as well, and felt that his queerness was being effaced by critics who knowingly and wrongly described his male subjects as female. As he writes here, "Pontormo we will avenge you: all the queens stealing nail polish, lipstick, eyeshadow, and running off to the churches and museums to put make-up on all the male figures."

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