The brother of fellow artists Afro and Dino, Mirko Basaldella was a leading figurein the Italian school of Art Informel. He trained in Milan in the studio of ArturoMartini and married Corrado Cagli’s sister Serena.He is remembered for the monumental gates of the Fosse Ardeatine, an extraordinary work designed in the period 1949-1950. He exhibited work in the USA in the second half of the 1950s and came into contact with the American avant-garde, especially Jackson Pollock, and the cultural artefacts of the Amerindians and the pre-Columbian civilizations, which were to have a deep influence on the forms ofhis art. Totem belongs to Mirko’s late period, characterized by square shapes that recall mechanical objects and are laid out in space, conceived as already present from the very conception of the work. (Transl. by Paul Metcalfe per Scriptum, Roma)