17th Jul, 2017 17:00
Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art
150
Edoardo Villa (Italy/South Africa 1915-2011)
Head
painted steel
Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated
Literature: Engel. E. ed. Edoardo Villa, Sculpture, United Book Distributors, (1980), pp.82–83, image no. 51 and 52. Lola Watter, Edoardo Villa, Philip Stein, 1967, page 5/6, illustrated no 33b.
Sold for R704,816
Estimated at R400,000 - R600,000
painted steel
Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated
Literature: Engel. E. ed. Edoardo Villa, Sculpture, United Book Distributors, (1980), pp.82–83, image no. 51 and 52. Lola Watter, Edoardo Villa, Philip Stein, 1967, page 5/6, illustrated no 33b.
(1)
109 x 54 x 54 cm
Notes:
The broad trajectory of Villa’s work from the 1950s on was to establish a uniquely hybridised oeuvre from his chosen sculptural materials. It is perhaps not emphasised enough that his body of work has had an international influence, despite his geographic distance from the mainstream metropolitan art markets and intellectual currents. His wrestling with his own ideas and forms over his long career was often in a dual context. On one hand he wrestled with the largely European art and cultural movements and ideas of the early and mid-20th century. On the other hand he was committed to and fascinated by the sculptural possibilities of African forms, rituals and intellectual histories.The beautiful and quintessential work on auction dates from the epicentre of the ‘Amadlozi decade’, when ideas about what one might call an Africanised avant-gardism were front and centre of the debates in Villa’s circle. While still on a domestic scale, the work is powerfully monumental, and certainly gestures to both ritual African masks and cubist constructions. Villa has given the work a highly accomplished and refined finish, especially in the painted surface of the steel, while retaining the industrial character and the inescapably Modernist redolence of the material. As much as the sculpture is influenced by African masks, it is also eerily reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s robot in the expressionist/Futurist classic film Metropolis, and even presciently of Darth Vader’s death mask! What Villa would have felt about such pop culture echoes is sadly now lost, but we still have the evocation of a crucial body of sculpture and ideas for South African art in this splendid example of his work.
James Sey
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Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 17th Jul, 2017
Aspire Art Auctions’ second Johannesburg sale offered a selection of some of the best works produced by local and international artists available on the local market. Offerings included Cameroonian-born, Belgium-based, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Chilean, Eugenio Dittborn, and South Africans, William Kentridge, Kendell Geers, Louis Maqhubela, Cecil Skotnes, Maggie Laubser, Irma Stern, and Mohau Modisakeng, amongst others.
The sale was led by an international auction record of R1 200 320 achieved for a drawing, Children under Apartheid, by exiled South African artist Dumile Feni, as well as the successful sale of top international lot Golden Mask by renowned performance artist Marina Abramović.
Viewing
Friday 14 July 2017 | 10 am – 7 pm
Saturday 15 July 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 16 July 2017 | 10 am – 4 pm
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