(Rome 1926–2009)
Warum ein Gedanke einen Raum verpestet?
(Why does a thought intoxicate a room?) from
Warum ein Gedanke einen Raum verpestet?, 1972,
iron, paper with lethraset, 71 x 43 x 6 cm

Photo certificate:
Studio Fabio Mauri, Rome, no.984

Provenance:
Gemma and Alberto Boatto Collection (directly from the artist)

Literature:
Fabio Mauri Der Politische Ventilator, 1/11/1973 p. 75 with ill.

Fabio Mauri executed his first screens in the late 1950s. The idea of the screen went beyond all ideological beliefs, (…)
representing the place of every possible projection (..) and through projections one can isolate the common ways of i

nterpreting reality: each projection encompasses an individual plot. ( from: en.fabiomauri.com/works/screens.html )

Fabio Mauri continued creating screens (Schermi) throughout the Sixties and in the early Seventies he started executing
the so called, second generation screens.
In 1972, he executed a total of 40 screens, 11 made of paper and the rest in canvas. The first series, exhibited in Rome
at Galleria Seconda Scala, were made of paper and were entitled Warum ein Gedanke einem Raum verpestet” (why does a thought intoxicate a room).
Mauri had started using the Gothic German writing in 1971; he firmly believed that German, the language of Luther, Kant, Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Freud, Planck, Einstein was the mother of European culture, “German encompasses the deep thought of a language and a passionate rationality” he wrote in one of his essays.

Given the importance of the screen we have in our sale, from which the entire series takes its name, Mauri wanted the renowned art critic, writer and close friend, Alberto Boatto to have it in his personal collection. Mauri and Boatto had met in the Sixties, they often collaborated  and always kept a close friendship. The list of exhibitions in which they collaborated is long, from “Ghenos Eros Thanatos” curated by Alberto Boatto and exhibited in Bologna (Galleria de Foscherari) and in Rome (Galleria La Salita where the performance was held) in 1974; “Oscuramento” held at Galleria Cannaviello in Rome in 1975, for which Boatto curated the exhibition catalogue; the text in “Fabio Mauri, D.P.V Der Politische Ventilator” written by Boatto in 1973, and later, in 1990  the text written for “Interno -Esterno” held at Galleria Anna D’Ascanio in Rome and Galleria Carini in Florence.

In 1976 Fabio Mauri funds the four monthly art magazine “La Città di Riga” (The city of Riga) with Alberto Boatto, Maurizio Calvesi, Jannis Kounellis and Umberto Silva.  In the first issue of the art magazine artists like Mario Merz, Eliseo Mattiacci, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighiero Boetti contributed. Gemma Vincenzini Boatto, an Italian television journalist and wife of Alberto would always participate to the meetings held for the Città di Riga magazine at Fabio Mauri’s place in Rome. She never missed one and remembering Fabio Mauri she says” I remember Fabio as a visionary thinker, the author of performances that were often ideological, a thorough artist who really had a “vocation” , and who was humanly inclined to a courtliness that we always perceived but that he never showed off.
(Gemma Boatto, October 2019)