Robert Longo: his 'sculptural' drawings at the Albertina

Robert Longo is one of the most successful American contemporary artists and the new exhibition that the Albertina is dedicating to him until 26 January is proof of his prominent place in today's art world.

Also a Chinese (among other things with the film Johnny Mnemonic, 1995, starring Keanu Reeves) and a musician, Longo has ancient Italian roots: his grandparents emigrated from Acireale and integrated into the American social fabric, so much so that the artist born in Brooklyn in 1953 does not speak Italian and his relationship with Italy, apart from being linked to "pizza, opera, the Roman empire the usual things', as he told us on the sidelines of the exhibition, is rooted above all in art, which he was able to study at close quarters when he spent a study period in Florence in the 1970s, being thunderstruck by Michelangelo's sculptures. It was to the Italian master that he looked when in the early 1980s he entered the art world with his now iconic series of drawings 'Men in the Cities', four of which are now on display in Vienna: 'Michelangelo's Slaves were the basis from which I started those works.

With 'Men in the Cities', Longo's career took off vertically and at the age of 28, the artist became a full-fledged cohort of acute observers of US society and the political debate first in the Reagan era, then in the following decades, with timely hyper-realist works on dramatic moments in recent American history, such as the 9/11 attack or the clashes between protesters and police at numerous civil rights events, or the devastating effects of the huge spread of firearms, or the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

The uniqueness of Longo's works lies in the fact that they are made in black and white, in charcoal, from other people's shots, whose utilisation rights he asks for.

The choice of such an ancient and unique technique, with which he produces often monumental works, lies in his study crowned by a diploma in sculpture: "For me, drawing is like creating a sculpture: charcoal is a sculptural tool, which with the help of the eraser creates light and shadow, thanks to the nuances of black. Black can be black-black, black-blue, black-grey, black-cold, black-hot and erasures play a primary role in the creation process'.