Elisa Magri focused her creative process on the assembly of photographs. Extrapolating images of advertising and wars, catastrophes, crimes and accidents from their original contexts, she used them as ready-mades in compositions that involve the use of a photosensitive canvas and photographic production techniques. The works in the collection are devoted to sensitive subjects that dominated the social and political debate in 1968: the war in Vietnam, poverty in Biafra, the Olympics in Mexico, American imperialism, Kennedy, racism.
ELISA MAGRI is an artist and documentarian. Her creative process is centred around photo-painting and the assembly of photographic images, taking from their original contexts advertising images and photographs of war, natural disasters, crimes and accidents, that she uses as ready-made images in compositions that involve the use of a photosensitive canvas and photographic production techniques. She moved to Rome where has managed the “Galleria Ciak” since 1958, hosting historical exhibitions of the Futurists, Surrealists and solo shows by young emerging artists from the European scene. In 1973 she worked on the production, filming and distribution of video biographies of artists and movements. In 1986 she authored, together with her husband, a cycle entitled Artisti allo specchio. Her documentaries include Fotomontaggi d’autore (1989). *She was born in 1933 in Milan, and passed away in Rome in 2018.