In 2026 he would have betrayed Pagnin for Eulàlio
Born in Libya, adopted by Rome, the painter was so in love with cycling that he enriched the racing jerseys requested by the equally regretted Mario Cal and Maurizio Castelli: the first for the Team Malvor, the other for the official Tour de France jerseys. Schifano offered to paint the final kilometer of every major climb in the Giro d'Italia. This year, he would place 10 kilometers of colored rubber in a stunning puzzle of 3.500 kilometers. The Giau Pass-Cime Coppi and others 9 summit passes would have conquered that world already outlined on the yellow jersey. And then:admiration for Renato Guttuso and for the Rolling Stones, the friendship with Alberto Moravia and those monthly phone changes…
When television shows images of riders scaling the mountains of the Giro d'Italia—and in 2026 there will be 10 major ones, from the Cima Coppi, the highest, on the Giau Pass at 2.236 meters above sea level, down to 9 other adventures on Blockaus, Corno alle Scale, Saint-Barthélémy, Lin Noir, Pila, Carì, Passo Duran, and the Piancavallo double—the "bitten" phrases of Maestro Mario Schifano start to bounce around in our minds.
Who knows what will happen when you visit the Andy Warhol retrospective of paintings open to the public of his fans... Who knows. We'll see.
Here, in front of the TV, one imagines Schifano intently tracing the climbers' silhouettes with a black marker on transparent film somehow glued to the screen, similar to what he did with Roberto Pagnin—his favorite! Because he was at the court of his dear friends Matio Cal and Maurizio Castelli—Greg LeMond, Gianni Bugno, Claudio Chiappucci, and company. All people whose bikes created special, unmistakable silhouettes.
Schifano would probably be attracted by Giulio Ciccone on the ramps of his Maiella and by the Uruguayan Afonso Eulàlio in the pink jersey halfway through the Giro, also by virtue of the bizarre pedaling in the Viareggio-Massa time trial in contrast to the elegance and power displayed by the time-splitting specialist Filippo Top-Ganna.
There, in Rome, in the halls and courtyard of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni on Via Nazionale, we would see the Maestro lavishly compliment Daniela Lancioni, who, with a keen critical spirit, has put together a collection worthy of hours and hours of in-depth observation, as recommended by the most refined writers already spotted in the capital chasing that genius of "Rapidly running through the things of the world" with or without a camera.
Schifano's relationship with cycling was intense and morbid. Once, in the late 1980s, he called Gazzetta to offer his services as "the painter of the last kilometer of the mountain races." Releasing the limitations and constraints of time, in 2026 he would paint 10 kilometers of asphalt out of the 3.500 kilometers of the 109th edition of Italy's premier stage race. Impossible... "We could make rubber puzzles" to compose the mosaic of my imagination so as not to be ruined by passing cars and riders before, during, and after the race, he blurted out.
We had slipped into the infernal circle of the impossible. And so the sports world had to content itself with reviewing the Maestro's creations for his friends Ca and Castelli, who at the time were forging professional teams (with the aforementioned Pagnin in addition to Giuseppe Saronni, Roberto Visentini, Silvano Contini, etc.) or bearing the scorpion logo on the yellow, green, blue, and white-with-red-polka-dotted uniforms of the Tour de France.
On the yellow jersey, the "Mario Schifano brand" was written on the front, top right, near the sleeve, while a stylized world with all five continents was printed in red on the back. Castelli was the Tour's technical clothing partner. And Maurizio, along with Antonio Martino Colombo of Columbus Tubi and others, had gone far beyond the collective imagination. It was around 1989 or so. Thirty-seven years have now passed since those jerseys. The Maestro passed away nine years later. Born in Libya in 1934, he would be sailing toward 92 in 2026 if he hadn't overdone everything. And when you say everything, you mean everything. His pop art will live well beyond the century of memory... Had he hung out with Marco Pantani, who knows how inspired he would have been by certain climbs at the Giro and the Tour. Perhaps the monochromes discovered thirty years earlier would have given way to canvases like palettes of colors on which sensations would have chased each other up and down the valleys, as happened to those who loved the Pirate, who exuded far more charm than Pagnin and Chiappucci (may they not begrudge him...).
Libyan by birth, Roman by adoption, Schifano was an integral part of the Second Capitoline School, sensitive—and friendly—to the allure of the insights of artists like Renato Guttuso and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a champion of the Futurism that still resonates with emotion in France. He was also a friend of Alberto Moravia, who wrote while observing the dynamic graphic lines of the Maestro, who adored him as much as the Rolling Stones. Literature, sculpture, music, cinema, photography—the eclectic Mario dabbled in everything, even when he wasn't accustomed to the rest of the world, so much so that he was hounded by the police and forced to change his phone number almost monthly when cell phones became accessible to almost everyone (early 1990s).
Moravia and Schifano were closely linked. The writer confessed in a review: "I don't know why I didn't become a painter." And regarding his friend Mario, whom he felt a certain fascination with, he emphasized: "The history of Italy lies in painting, rather than in literature." And on the canvas Compagni-Compagni, which he had received as a gift, he clarified: "More of a man than an artist... and that is, words like art, artist seem to me to be a kind of excuse one seeks within oneself."
Schifano and Moravia shared a true friendship and chemistry, despite their complexities. The painter, for example, wrote a dedication along these lines: "I love you, truly and always. You're also in this exhibition. Yours, Mario," referring to the exhibition at Palazzo Diamanti in Ferrara in the late 1970s.
What most attracts us about Schifano are his monochromatic works. Hence the comparison to Andy Warhol. And every now and then we stop to gaze in awe at that collection of transparent film cutouts featuring the features of the riders seen on television, seemingly thrown together haphazardly, yet instead originating from a marker in the artist's hand and flowing down from an imaginary mountain to the plain. It's Schifano's hymn to the Milan-Sanremo in a year that has become distant for an event that no one will be able to kill, not even with artificial intelligence, because it's full of complexities that escape most, but not those who capture every moment of the challenge on the Riviera di Ponente.
