Antonio Mottolese's Drawings of Death and Decomposition

Roberta Sironi and Anita Romanello explore Antonio Mottolese's work on death, focusing on the body's disintegration. The text describes a process where the body no longer belongs to itself, becoming subject to external forces: thinning, smoothing, deflagrating, and liquefying. The downward motion of the body toward earth involves escaping liquids, drying tissues, and crumbling dust as a necessary sequence of fragility replacing rounded form. Flesh gives way to bone, hollow feather shafts, and skin; mass becomes line, volume reduces to surface, and color oxidizes into crystals. The remains transform into an imago—not an adult stage of insect metamorphosis.