Roma Aeterna (espresso)

Roma Aeterna Ralph Winkler was born in Dresden in 1939. He is one of the major exponents of the German neo-expressionist artistic movement. Much work of this Eastern German painter and print maker was smuggled to West Germany. Named after the geologist Albrecht Penck, he chooses A.R.Penck as synonym in 1968. In 1980 he moved to West Germany and at the moment he is living and working in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Dublin and New York.

With this illy collection set, Penck decorated the cups with ancient symbols like the spiral, the lion, the circle or the cross. You might say that these symbols are Pencks trademark and as you can see with the "BMW Art Cars series" on the right, he did not only decorate espresso cups with them.

Even more interesting, there is a prototype that is different then the six cups that were released. I don't know it was not produced. Maybe Peck had to choose only six cups, or maybe there were plans to produce a limited 7th cup like the Facce Italiane and the Il Ballo sets.

The six cups came in a gift box with a can of coffee, but was also released in a version of three different gift boxes (all with two cups a brochure and a can of coffee).
year  1997
artist   A.R. Penck
type   - 6 espresso cups, signed and numbered
copies  x?x
manufacturer
inside illy collection
bottom 
other editions  - illy espresso, not S/N
- amici collection,S/N
brochure