





Mondo Cane, 1983-1984
Three silkscreens on copperplate printing paper, with punched holes, and one hand-painted gouache on rag paper. 76 x 56 cm. Edition: 30, with silkscreens in colors illustrated + XX with silkscreens in additional colors; each signed and numbered on verso.
EUR 3,000
This early work by Gerhard Merz is a four-part edition created in conjunction with his exhibition of the same name at the Lenbachhaus in Munich. Both in content and in title, the works reference Gualtiero Jacopetti’s 1962 film of the same name, which – with its often shocking images of foreign cultures – founded its own genre: the mondo films. Merz takes up this theme by presenting portraits that resemble ethnographic depictions of foreign cultures. The figures shown appear to be from another, "exotic" world – marked by symbols, traditions, and rituals that seem alien to the Western gaze. The fourth sheet in this edition, a monochrome gouache painted in blue, contrasts with these images both formally and thematically. It can be interpreted as a symbol of Western modernity – a counter-image to the diversity of the others, though not without ambiguity or meaning.