Macabre Dance II

Salvatore Grippi

Atelier 17 printmaker Salvatore Grippi renders an epic scene of battle and human conflict within the bounds of his matrix, harkening to ancient Roman reliefs carved into the sarcophagi of warriors. Two figures with shields and knives dominate the foreground, while the rest of the composition is a chaotic tumble of human and horse forms clashing in the heat of battle.

On the whole, Grippi’s work was divided between larger-than-life oil paintings of seemingly mundane still lifes, presented in a powerful, blocky, nearly Cubist style, and haunting figurative work rendered in liquid, ever-moving forms that was often used as an outlet to process his traumatic experiences in World War II. “Macabre Dance II” upholds the poetry of antiquity while simultaneously utilizing the freedom of contemporary Abstraction to convey emotion.