Valerio Adami’s works are primarily inspired by French Cloisonnism and Pop artists, especially Roy Lichtenstein with his interest in comics and advertisements. In 1964, Adami turned to a graphic style, no longer modulating his colours but making them saturated within flat planes to create disturbing images like disconnected body parts in domestic interiors.
With their intensely contrasting hues and acute angles, the paintings have a shattered, prismatic quality while still pertaining to a narrative, fable, or myth. His cartoon-like compositions start off as drawings based on banal media photographs found in newspapers or magazines, and usually have a satirical edge.
Adami has also incorporated portraits of various intellectuals in his works. These include giant figures in literature, music, history, art, and philosophy, attracting in Adami’s treatment much attention from novelists and philosophers such as Italo Calvino and Jacques Derrida.
Typical examples of Adami paintings include Il gilet di Lenine (1972), Interno con figura di donna e poltrona (1968/1969), Bedroom Scene (1969), Club Privato (Momento) Piccola Gimnastica da Camera, 1970 (1970).
Prints
Adami makes a great many lithographs, screen prints, and posters. These are often deliberately unsigned, but still popular.
Examples include Derrière le Miroir Adami (1970), The Red Guard (1974), and The Circus (1990).
