JO Munich / München 1972 Valerio Adami - Open Edition

Valerio Adami reduced the athlete to the absolute minimum and discovered something essential. His sprinter is all contour and colour: a red torso merging into a red sky, cyan socks cutting through a field of violet, the body defined by nothing but its own outline against two zones of flat, saturated paint. There is no face, no number, no crowd, only form caught at the moment of maximum exertion, pared back until what remains is pure visual energy.

The Italian painter had built his reputation on images that combined the clarity of the cartoon with the ambition of serious painting, bold black lines, colours that refuse to modulate or shade. Applied to the Olympic body, the result is something between an icon and a signal: instantly legible, impossible to look away from. It is among the most collected of the Munich artist posters, and the easiest to live with.

This piece is sold unframed, carefully rolled and shipped in a rigid tube to ensure it arrives in pristine condition.