Jan Fabre - The Smile of Death (2022)

Jan Fabre, born in Antwerp in 1958, is one of the most visionary and interdisciplinary figures in international contemporary art: visual artist, performer, theatre director and writer, with a coherent universe built over more than forty years around the body, blood, sacrifice, metamorphosis, the sacred and death. In 2022 he shaped The Smile of Death in Mediterranean red coral: a human skull modelled with sculptural mastery, whose smile is at once ironic and an elegant warning about destiny and ephemeral beauty.

Coral, a precious and organic material, is transformed into a substance of thought, a body that retains the memory of life even in death. The skull, central figure of the vanitas tradition, here becomes vibrant and burning, as if it came from the depths of the mind or from the underworld of desire. The work belongs to the cycle Allegory of Caritas (An Act of Love), presented in 2024 at 21Gallery in Treviso in a solo exhibition curated by Melania Rossi.

Fabre was the first living artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, and his work has been shown at the Hermitage, the MAXXI in Rome, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and Palazzo delle Esposizioni. Coral sculptures occupy the rarest and most requested segment of his recent catalogue, collected internationally by museums, foundations and institutional collectors.