Michelangelo Pistoletto, Self-Portrait, lithograph, 70x50 cm, 1976

Pistoletto began his creative activity in the field of painting with numerous self-portraits, on canvases prepared with metal primer and later on mirror-polished steel surfaces. Shortly after the mid-1950s, he began to exhibit the first real results of his research into self-portraiture. This lithograph, taken from one of his works, depicts precisely a self-portrait of the artist.

The representation is quite emblematic and takes place in a room with a rough ceiling. In the foreground we find a seated man positioned in profile, his legs spread, his clothes and the attributes he is holding tell us that he is a painter: a palette and brushes. We are able to see his gaze in the foreground and frontally thanks to his image painted in a picture placed exactly in front of him and in the centre of the scene on an easel, his eyes looking at the viewer through the painted picture, with a confident and penetrating gaze.

Just behind, still in the painted picture, we see another figure, this time from behind, also seated, the gender is not clear, presumably a woman, perhaps the very woman posing nude in the spotlight. At the end of the scene painted in the painting we can see the figure of Pistoletto intent on photographing the woman with an easel and camera. This work is a painting within a painting. The centre of the scene is the painting on the painter's easel. The lithograph on glossy paper is hand-signed at lower right and numbered 86/100 at lower left.