Salvatore Scarpitta, Ernie Triplett Special
1968-1969
03.07.2013 — 03.08.2013
Show introduction
The races of Ernie Triplett, an Illinois driver who died on the California tracks in 1934 at just 28, are the starting point for the creation of one of the machines made by Salvatore Scarpitta and exhibited in the 1960s in Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Thanks to some archive images, we can retrace the events that led to the birth of one of the most iconic works of this artist with distant Sicilian origins, himself the protagonist of car races on the dirt tracks of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Artist
Born in New York in 1919, he spent his childhood in Los Angeles. Here he became passionate about car racing at the Legion Ascot Speedway. In 1936 he was in Rome and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. He took part in the Second World War as a "Monuments Man" in the US Navy, in charge of finding, conserving and cataloging the art stolen by the Nazis.
