Emilio Tadini (1927 - 2002) The Murdered Poet, 1990 Oil on canvas 54.5 x 65.5 cm Signature: 'Tadini' on verso Other inscription: 'The murdered poet' on verso Provenance: Studio Marconi, Milan (1990); Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Conservation status. Support: 95% Conservation status. Surface: 95% A central point in Tadini's production is the dialogue between literature and painting, which led him to be an illustrator of writers both in printed editions (ex multis, Louis F. Céline, "Scandalo negli abissi", illustrations by Emilio Tadini, edited by Ernesto Ferrero, Genoa, 1992) and in his own paintings. The work under examination, datable to the end of the 1980s, probably represents Tadini's reflection on Guillaume Apollinaire's "The Assassinated Poet", which appeared in Italy in several editions, including one for the types of "Il Formichiere", in Milan, in 1976, and, precisely in 1990 in two editions, for the types of Orsa Maggiore, Settimo Milanese, and Studio Editoriale in Milan. It is precisely the appearance of these two editions in bookshops, together with the date the work was sold to Veneto Banca (12 July 1990), that allows the work to be dated to early 1990. Tadini shows a man in a green suit, clearly recognisable as a painter by the two small tubes of paint in his pocket, who brings one hand to his side, has lost his balance and is about to fall off the canvas. A man in a costume runs off to the side of the painting, barefoot, on a grey base, with only a red hovel against the blue horizon. Anatomical trait: the long legs, the small head. Are we therefore witnessing a tragic scene? Probably Tadini was simply alluding to the desire to escape to the sea, in the heat of June-July in Milan (as art critic Rossana Bossaglia used to complain, "much hotter than August"), leaving aside intellectual commitments. Opposite, in fact, are the directions of the man in the falling suit and the muscular swimmer. This reading, which allows the work to be further dated to the passage between July and August 1990, constitutes a further link with the collection of short stories published by Apollinaire under the title 'The Assassinated Poet'. After careful meditation on Rabelais' work, Apollinaire claims to have invented a new literary genre, the 'lyric-satirical' one. The long story that opens and titles the collection recounts the entire life of Croniamantal, Apollinaire's own alter-ego. "And what a life! An uninterrupted saraband of improbable, fairy-tale and hilarious situations, transposed with an iridescent and multifaceted stylistic chromaticity (it almost seems as if we are listening to the Gongs in 'The Flying Teapot'); references to the contemporary are punctually deformed, clothed and transcended by a massive dose of connections to myths, legends and symbols that are emptied of their usual references and continually bend to Apollinaire's overwhelming hilarity' (the Cosmic Jocker, De Baser, 21 March 2017).