About the exhibition
Pistoletto saw in figurative painting the path most suited to his own background and culture. He identified the selfportrait as the tool with which to respond to these needs, and focused his inquiries and production on it from the start. Between 1956 and 1958 he painted largescale self-portraits that lay between the abstract and the material, with the face occupying the entire surface of the canvas. Before the Mirror features two of these very early oil and acrylic works on canvas.