“Grande quadro clessidra” (Large Clepsydra Painting) is a dark grey table measuring 103×73.5 cm covered by a grid of strips in a staggered arrangement. Each cell is connected to the others through pierces made vertically in the depth of the strip. A sheet of transparent rhodoid plastic is applied over this grid through black studs. The hollow space is filled with an amount of lead spheres that move when the work rotates.

The viewer can interact with the work by reversal, observing the fall of the spheres.

Miriorama 5, the solo exhibition of Giovanni Anceschi at Galleria Pater, featured around five more Clepsydra paintings besides the “Grande quadro clessidra”. They had different sizes and included versions with panels of lacquered wood in bright colours (red, orange, blue), which bore cut-out shapes in the style of Jean Arp or geometrical ones, protected by rhodoid sheets which held sand or grey powders.

Miriorama 10 featured a new variation of the Clepsydra Painting: a smaller (around 30×30 cm), square version with coloured glass granules normally employed for reflectors. The envelope was applied through ring and pin, which allowed rotation on a square surface.

In the present version, a square sealed envelope made of transparent PVC holds a sheet of the same material folded with flounces which hinders the fall of sand.

Years later at the beginning of the 1970s, Anceschi, back from Algeria, settled for two years in Rome, where he taught at the Corso Superiore in Disegno Industriale e Comunicazione Visiva. He met again his dear friend Toti Scialoja, an Italian painter and poet. In the 1960s Scialoja proposed to the gallerist Gian Tomaso Liverani to host an exhibition of Gruppo T, Miriorama 10, at the gallery La Salita in Rome.

Liverani sent to the studio of Scialoja the unsold works by Anceschi.

To the embarrassment of Scialoja, he confessed that they were stored in a corner of the studio, where they became covered with dust, to the point that they became so ruined that he threw them away.

Title
Quadri clessidra

Artist
Giovanni Anceschi

Date
1959

Collection/owner
Collection of the artist (version in dark grey)

Exhibition
Miriorama 5, 10