Purchased from a private collection in 1980, this work entered the Cariplo Collection under the title Three Profiles. Both the subject and composition are similar to those of the series Victors and Vanquished [1] and Opponents. Critics hold that in this repertoire the artist begins to reflect on the existential malaise of modern man, victim of the violence that undermines interpersonal relationships in contemporary society. From the 1950s on Brindisi experimented with figurative painting in the Expressionist style and a pictorial gesturality borrowed from the Art Informel models he was able to study on visits to Paris, New York and various Esposizioni Internazionali d’Arte della Città di Venezia. The artist was also influenced by the work of the Renaissance painter El Greco (born Domenikos Theotocopoulos) from whom he borrowed the sombre tone and livid light characteristic of his socially committed works, and by that of Oskar Kokoschka, one of the leading exponents of Expressionism, whom the Italian met in Salzburg in 1956.

Brindisi’s mature production is characterised by the repetition of the same subjects, executed with a rapid technique that necessitated the use of acrylic colours. Datable to around the mid-1970s, the work in the Collection can be linked to this line of research on the basis of the dynamism of the figures and the use of bright colours, but the handling is both hasty and mediocre.

Appointed President of the Milan Triennale in 1972, the artist continued to show his works frequently in leading private galleries in Italy and abroad, and from 1970 on he devoted himself to founding the Museo Alternativo Remo Brindisi [2] at Lido di Spina, where he built up an important collection of contemporary art that included the work of other artists along with his own.