“The Anxious Battle in Between” is a mixed-media diptych by Rob Santello. Across two connected panels, Santello layers handwritten text, roughly drawn figures, symbols, diagrams and abstract marks over fields of muted blue, yellow, gray and red. The surface has a palimpsest-like quality, with images and words partially obscured, revised and built over one another.
The work combines Neo-Expressionist painting, graffiti-influenced mark-making, raw figuration and gestural abstraction. Its coded imagery and repeated symbols recall the visual language of Jean-Michel Basquiat, while the loose, handwritten lines have connections to Cy Twombly and the deliberately unrefined figures of Jean Dubuffet and Art Brut. These references provide art-historical context rather than suggesting direct imitation. Santello has previously identified Basquiat and Gerhard Richter as important early points of interest in his development as an artist.
Rather than presenting a single linear narrative, the diptych invites viewers to move between fragments and interpret the relationships among its figures, words and signs. The tension between order and disorder reflects Santello’s broader interest in oppositions such as high and low culture, the sacred and profane, and contemplation and consumption.
This large contemporary artwork would appeal to collectors of Neo-Expressionism, contemporary mixed-media painting, graffiti art and figurative abstraction.
Mixed media on stretched canvas
Diptych, listed at 48 x 48 inches
