Adam and Eve

Michelangelo Pistoletto made his first quadri specchianti (mirror paintings) in 1962, when he began collaging highly polished stainless steel panels with life-size cutouts of figures and objects. The artist provides a date range for each mirror painting: from the year of his conceptualization of the mirror paintings in 1962 through the actual year of realization of each work. Since 1971 the artist has used the technique of silkscreen print as a process of reproduction that is impersonal but not completely mechanical. By doing so, the artist places his figures between the real space of display and the virtual space of the mirror. The viewer sees their own reflections registered alongside the figures of Pistoletto’s mirror paintings in an experience that connects art and life.

Adamo ed Eva depicts two nude figures on two panels. While the figures and dual panels evoke Judeo-Christian ideas about the origins of humankind, according to Pistoletto these works are meant to depict “the self-portrait of the world, open to the participation of everybody.”