Sergio Sarri

The work of the Italian contemporary artist Sergio Sarri centres on the complex relationship between man and machine. Born in Turin in 1938, Sarri studied painting in Bern, Switzerland and then in Paris in the late 1950s. Following a trip to the United States in 1965, his work began to explore the connections between humanity and technology which have remained the dominant theme of his career.

In his sleekly stylised canvases, Sarri collages fragmented elements both human and mechanical into dark, often erotic fantasies reminiscent of 1920s cinema, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Wiene’s Cabinet of Dr Caligari. A surrealist spirit infuses these futuristic visions, which are rendered with the hard edge and often bright colours of Pop Art, evoking cruel parallel worlds in which mankind has become subordinate to the machines they themselves created.