oil on cardboard, 61×35 cm
signed and dated lower left U. Conti 1911
L'Self-portrait Conti's first painting, dating back to 1911, was executed with makeshift materials, dissolving inexpensive paints in olive oil and painting over the back of a small picture that decorated the walls of his house. It is, however, a surprising testament to the awareness to which immediate self-intuition could lead, once the pictorial process had begun. The figure of the boy stands alone, frowning and searching, against a brick-colored background, driven by an invisible energy. He is almost an apparition, dominated by a purely psychic tension, his eyes wide in his emaciated face, his oversized ears pricked out like those of an animal in a state of alarm. In an extremely rare case, the condition of adolescence is portrayed here by an exceptional adolescent: the artist himself.
