TAN Colore, 1983

Before even turning twenty, in 1958 Sergio Lombardo made his artistic debut with a series of collages titled Monocromi which immediately appeared radically new. He sees himself as a scientific researcher, a technician or a craftsman: he cuts out a great many squares of fabric, with multiuse glue he sticks them to the canvas, then he paints the grid with industrial paints. It’s an impersonal form of painting, replicable by anyone, with titles that do no more than to announce the number of pieces and the dominant colour. In the following cycle of works, Gesti atipici, he takes newspapers and reproduces the silhouettes of politicians of the day onto the support. His opening to the world of mass media also ensured that Lombardo was included among the ranks of the Roman Pop Art movement, even though it was the mechanical tracing procedure that interested him more than the icons he painted. [...]