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Dopo la Fine

Painting of a woman who appears to be lying sideways on top of a white and floral piece of fabric. The richly colored fabric takes up most of the foreground, and the woman appears to be far away. Sharp lines and forms make the painted almost abstract.
Courtesy the artist and Greengrassi, London.

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  • Painting of a woman who appears to be lying sideways on top of a white and floral piece of fabric. The richly colored fabric takes up most of the foreground, and the woman appears to be far away. Sharp lines and forms make the painted almost abstract.

Date:

2008

Artist:

Margherita Manzelli
Italian, born 1968

About this artwork

Margherita Manzelli creates haunting, oddly ravishing images of solitary women. Her meticulously crafted paintings and delicate works on paper imagine wan, languid, at times emaciated or subtly deformed female characters isolated within an abstracted, pictorial dream space. Almost always seated or otherwise recumbent, the mute, still women are engaged in no activity other than staring, their penetrating eyes locked in a weirdly knowing confrontation with the viewer. Manzelli’s spectral women seem painfully aware of the fact that they are on display. Her characters are often attired in or surrounded by colorful, richly detailed clothing and textiles. Importantly, the artist does not work from photographs and does not use models—the figures and their environments come entirely from her imagination. Although this figure does resemble the artist, Manzelli does not consider her work to be self-portraiture.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Contemporary Art

Artist

Margherita Manzelli

Title

Dopo la Fine

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

2008

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

300 × 196 cm (118 × 77 in.)

Credit Line

Through prior gift of Adeline Yates

Reference Number

2009.54

Copyright

Courtesy the artist and Greengrassi, London.

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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