CURRENT EXHIBITION- PIETRO PSAIER'S POP ART COLLECTION

Time and time again, Pietro Psaier was forced to the conclusion that he must be an artist of some sort. From the beginning of his career, Psaier has produced works of great and enormous maturity which now clearly illustrate a genuine creative mental process of a cohesive picture of reality. Pietro Psaier (1936 — 2004) was born in Italy and he was better known for his Pop Art, however, there is no domain of creative art in which he did not try his hand, including working with his father on concept car designs for Enzo Ferrari during the late 1950s.


Psaier moved to Spain soon after he saw a bullfight back in 1955 during the dark Franco Era and he became a serious artist of the ‘Toros’ creating his own style of art known as ‘Toro Pop’. Whilst in Madrid, he exhibited previously banned erotica works, which were seized by Franco's Guardia Civil on the orders of the Catholic Church. Psaier was arrested and imprisoned and subsequently deported back to Italy.

In the summer of 1963 Pietro Psaier travelled to Mexico City and illegally made his way to California settling in San Francisco at the height of the Flower Power era. As the Anti-Vietnam War lobby grew, Psaier turned out Anti War posters for various underground groups. Later Psaier moved to New York, mostly working as a waiter in Soho bars and ostensibly looking for a place to paint. Along the way he was constantly thrown together with new people surrounding the New York Pop Art Circle.

Having got an insight into the life of 60’s New York, he marched with all the impetuosity of youth into those circles were the pulsations of the ‘Beat Generation’ life were the strongest. He produced his best results in the haunts of the artists and musicians towards whom he felt drawn by his restless desire of all things American.

Pietro Psaier pushed through many frontiers and hippie culture, shaped by a generation of rock musicians, writers and artists; he introduced a new synthesis between reality and abstraction. Over many years, this artist lived in the shadow of Warhol’s factory. Psaier’s work will live on and as he entered his later years will continue to stubbornly defy art fashion and the art establishment, but will attain a high degree of authenticity. It is this that makes his work an exemplary contribution to contemporary art.