Salvatore Mangione, who later adopted the moniker Salvo, was born in Leonforte in Sicily in 1947 and became a prominent figure in Italian conceptual art and painting. In 1968 he relocated to Turin, where he became associated with the dynamic group of artists founding the radical Arte Povera movement. He shared a studio with Alighiero Boetti, and produced distinctive series of conceptual works, creating compelling photographic self-portraits in the guise of different historical and professional personages, including newspaper photographs of Cuban revolutionaries and Nazi troops. He also made text-based pieces with lettering incised or inscribed on marble panels, or formed from neon lights, notably writing his own name in neon colours of the Italian flag, in the work Tricolore (1971).

Following this intense period of experimentation in a variety of media, around 1973 the artist turned decisively to painting. Rejecting the aesthetic of monochromatic abstraction favoured by Italian painters of his day, Salvo instead set out to rehabilitate figurative painting a decade ahead of its international resurgence. In his early paintings, Salvo reconceptualised masterpieces by Old Masters, namely Raphael and Vittore Carpaccio. However by the end of the decade he had shifted his incisive gaze to the representation of landscapes and cities, characteristically using pastel colours, while also drawing on the traditions of memory and myth. In the latter decades of his career, Salvo travelled widely across the Middle East, North Africa, and East Asia, and continued to create landscapes inspired by the landscapes he encountered on his journeys.

The present painting encapsulates Salvo’s unique style that dominated his practice from the late 1970s onwards. Alba (Dawn) reflects the vibrant awakening captured in the picture, the sun like a glowing orb at the centre of the composition. The vibrant colours give the humble landscape an almost transcendental feel, illuminated from the background, casting its light towards the viewer. The vegetation – including cacti, a cypress, and a palm tree among others – give the sense of everlasting growth, with the otherworldly colours suggesting a paradisiacal location. The outcrops of rock at the base of the trees add character to the vista, which falls away into the distance, evoking an infinite horizon and allowing the yellow of the sun to radiate over the composition, in Salvo’s characteristic pastel palette. Indeed, each landscape element, touched at a different angle by the sun, is carefully rendered in pale but saturated hues, reflecting the almost blinding quality of the summer sunshine, even as the sun sits low in the sky.

Alba, with its smooth forms, flat planes of bold colour, and simplicity of subject matter, appears like a childhood recollection of a summer day, filled with optimism and wonder. Such insistent naivety is a hallmark of Salvo’s work, which can seek to transcend time and transport both artist and viewer to a place and mood where one could enjoy an unfettered sense of pure pleasure, easy happiness. In this painting, wonder and memory have become a place venerated in paint.