Art and Heritage Online Database

Collection: Gray's School of Art Collection
Object Type: Painting
Artist/Maker: Ziffo, George
Date: 1999
Media/Materials: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: overall: 91.5 cm x 152.1 cm; :
Classification: Painting

Description:

George Ziffo (b.1978 in Scotland) lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

Ziffo’s paintings use the portrait genre and draw on a wide variety of influences including cubist painting, perceptual psychology, cartoons and more recently, the ‘stock characters’ of the Commedia Dell’ Arte. Ziffo’s paintings share in common a set of simplified features such as eyelets and ovals that are interchangeable and mutate between works, hinting at rudimentary portraits, but on the verge of slipping into abstraction. They evoke an uneasy sense of physical presence, testing figure-ground relationships, alternating between portals to, and masks of fictional personalities.

Object Number: ABDRG10059