GIANNI POLITI The Last Stand

Gianni Politi new exhibition The Last Stand at the gallery Lorcan O’Neill Roma includes monumental paintings made during long lockdown hours in his studio in Rome.

The exhibition title, The Last Stand, refers to a similarly named grand history painting by William Barnes Wollen (1857-1936) which depicts a scene from the first Anglo-Afghan War of 1841 where a small group of British soldiers were decimated in the snow after their retreat from Kabul.

This cautionary tale of expansionist and deadly hubris influenced Politi’s efforts in these latest works to express the causality of all human activity.