Marcia Hafif’s first monographic exhibition at MAMCO (more would follow over the next fifteen years), featured eleven paintings in two rooms 
on the first floor. These were all created during her stay 
in Italy from 1961 to 1969, during a period when Hafif described her painting as “becoming flatter and more hard edge.” Pieces from her highly diverse formal repertoire may reference playing, or suggest parts of bodies or landscapes, but they also toy with the notion of a portal or gate. She chose the colors of advertising from the period, especially the colors of billboards along Italian highways. Hafif developed an analytical, very systematic approach aimed at underscoring the “act of painting,” in other words, her palette of colors, her choice of technique and medium. She paints works in series, in order to get the most out of the elements she applies, and to make the viewer aware of the complexity of painting.