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ROBERT LONGO, Study for Lagundi, Nias, 2000

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Study for Lagundi, Nias, 2000. Ink and charcoal on vellum. 17.5 × 44.5 cm (6 7/8 × 17 1/2 in). Signed, titled and dated ‘Study for Lagundi, NIAS Robert Longo, 2000’ in the lower margin.

PROVENANCE Galleria Mazzoli, Modena Private Collection, Italy
EXHIBITED Modena, Galleria Emilio Mazzoli, Robert Longo: 1980–2000, 2000
As a leader of the highly acclaimed and influential Pictures Generation, Robert Longo along with the likes of Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince defined through their art the American social, economic and cultural experience of the 1980s. Using easily recognizable imagery culled from the mass media, they explored how images shape perceptions of the world. Longo’s early series from this period, Men in the Cities, depicts mainly solitary men in professional attire contorting their bodies. These images can be interpreted as investigating the prevalence of violence, power and aggression in the New York Wall Street generation. On the other hand, his more recent Wave Series, in which waves at their breaking point serve as a metaphor for the natural world’s creative as well as destructive abilities. Seen together, these two series dramatise the opposition between the forces of man and nature, of male and female. This duality is something which Longo’s work constantly returns to, and one which has preoccupied other artists in the Pictures Generation.

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