In Context: Italian Art at Sotheby's London, 5th October

Press Release September 2017

London | [phone] | Rosamund Chester | [e-mail] | Toby Skeggs | [e-mail]

IN CONTEXT: ITALIAN ART

5th October 2017

Sotheby's London: This October, Sotheby's is broadening the remit of its annual Italian Sale to explore the artistic dialogues between Italian and international artists in the post-war period.

Seminal works by Lucio Fontana, Alighiero Boetti and Michelangelo Pistoletto will be joining works by international heavyweights, including: an exceptional nail painting by Günther Uecker, never before offered at auction; Andy Warhol's portrait of renowned Italian patron of the arts Graziella Lonardi Buontempo, which has remained in the same family collection since 1974; and Alexander Calder's visionary standing mobile, acquired directly from the artist in the 1960s. Highlights also include Marino Marini's monumental L'orchestra and six important works from the esteemed collection of legendary Italian photographer Ugo Mulas.

For more details, please view the online sale catalogue here.

Sale Highlights ALIGHIERO BOETTI

Addizione, 1982, embroidered tapestry, 242 by 248.2 cm

£1,700,000-2,500,000 / US$ 2,190,000-3,220,000

Monumental in scale and vibrant in design, Addizione embodies the strength and potency of Boetti's unique artistic voice. One of just four pairs correlatively entitled Addizione and Sottrazione, of which only three are in colour, the present work is extremely rare.

The verbal lattice of embroidered letters that characterises Addizione was a prominent mode of depiction that Boetti used in his arazzi series, via which he toyed with the dualism of ordine e disordine (order and disorder), the central tenets of the artist's practice.

Commenting on the idea of identifying order from disorder, crucial to so much of his work, Boetti said: "It's like looking at a starry sky. Someone who does not know the order of the stars will see only confusion, whereas an astronomer will have a very clear vision of things."

Viewed by the public on just two occasions, when it was exhibited in Paris in both 1990 and also 2010, Addizione was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 1987 and is appearing at auction for the first time.

LUCIO FONTANA

Concetto Spaziale, Attese, 1968, waterpaint on canvas, 61 by 50 cm

£1,500,000-2,000,000 / US$ 1,940,000-2,580,000

The present work is one of Lucio Fontana's most powerful and dramatic iterations of his venerated series of tagli. Amongst the most instantly recognisable gestures of the post-war era, the tagli define the quintessence of the artist's career.

Deeply influenced by the historic developments in scientific research and space travel that Fontana witnessed throughout his lifetime (from Einstein's Theory of Relativity in 1916 to man's first journey into space with Yuri Gagarin in 1961), the artist's tagli provided a way for him to develop his own ideas concerning the relationship between cosmic and material space.

This work is of particular significance, as it was created in 1968 - a decade after Fontana's initial conceptualisation and experimentation for the tagli series, and two years after he was awarded the International Grand Prize for Painting at the 23rd Venice Biennale.

Coming to auction for the first time, Concetto Spaziale, Attese boasts an illustrious exhibition history, having been exhibited at Tornabuoni Arte in Florence and Milan, and the Palazzo Ducale in Genova.

MARINO MARINI

L'orchestra, 1958-59, oil on canvas, 155 by 155 cm

£600,000-800,000 / US$ 775,000-1,040,000

Vibrantly coloured and exuding an extraordinary sense of dynamism through its monumental scale, L'orchestra is a rare and highly significant example of Marino Marini's oeuvre. Depicting a rendering of an orchestra, which is almost entirely abstract in its deconstruction of familiar instrumental shapes, this work reveals Marini's skill in his manipulation of colour and painterly form.

Although Marini frequently portayed theatre and circus performers within his paintings, musicians and the subject of the orchestra appear much less

frequently; within his interpretation, the orchestra becomes imbued with all the joie-de-vivre, excitement and colour of exuberance and play.

The importance of L'orchestra is attested to by its distinguished exhibition history; the gallery Toninelli Arte Moderna in Milan was pivotal in presenting Marini to the international public as a highly gifted and skilled painter, as well as an accomplished sculptor. The present work was later exhibited at the Museum Boymans- Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1964) and the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp (1965), amongst other prestigious European venues.

L'orchestra has remained in the same collection for the past 30 years, and has never before been offered at auction.

SERGIO CAMARGO

Untitled (Relief No. 196), 1968, painted wood construction,

82.2 by 82.7 by 7 cm

£700,000-900,000 / US$ 905,000-1,160,000

Born of the artist's fascination with the interplay of light and shadow, Untitled (Relief No. 196) transcends the confines of the canvas by combining elements of painting and sculpture. The present work is a spectacular example of a remarkable and elegant series that came to define Camargo's opus.

Just like his professor at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires, Lucio Fontana, Camargo was fascinated with spatial exploration. Interestingly, the creation of the series of which the present work forms part was entirely accidental; cutting up an apple to eat, Camargo was enthralled by the relationship between the two planes created by his cuts.

Created in 1968, Untitled (Relief No. 196) comes from the year of Camargo's inclusion in Documenta 4 alongside Fontana, Manzoni, Yves Klein and Günther Uecker. With it, Camargo pays particular homage to the enduring influence of Fontana, with the void in the centre an unmistakable tribute to the revolutionary tagli of his teacher.

GÜNTHER UECKER

Rose, 1964, kaolin and nails on canvas on board, 99 by 66 by 7.5 cm

£500,000-700,000 / US$ 645,000-905,000

Rose, a reference to the poetry of Gertrude Stein, was executed at the height of Günther Uecker's immersion in the ZERO group (between 1961 and 1966).

ZERO was founded in the wake of World War II, when many artists were striving for an artistic expression that would satisfy their need for a new beginning, free from gestural brushwork and pictorial sentimentality. The group's name aptly referenced the countdown for a rocket launch, and advocated a radical new beginning for modern art.

With Rose, Uecker hammered in nails at slanting angles and various depths, creating a dramatic chiaroscuro effect that varies depending on view point and position of light, delivering an entirely unique visual experience. As described by

Uecker, the nail is "the ideal object with which to model light and shadow - to make time visible... It protrudes as a tactile feeler from the flat surface, much like a sundial".

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO

Motociclisti, 1967, painted tissue-paper on stainless steel, 120 by 230 cm

£1,200,000-1,600,000 / US$ 1,550,000-2,070,000

Forming part of Michelangelo Pistoletto's most recognisable and celebrated series, the Quadri Specchiati ("Mirror Paintings"), Motociclisti is an early example of the artist's radical and eloquent use of the reflective surface.

Created at a crucial point in the artist's ascending career,

1967 marked the seminal opening of the very first Arte Povera exhibition at L'Attico Gallery in Rome. Marrying the everyday materialism of Arte Povera and the mass-produced quality of Pop art, Pistoletto here forges an entirely unique aesthetic that defies categorisation.

Coming to auction for the first time, Motociclisti has remained in the same collection for over 40 years.

ANDY WARHOL

Graziella Lonardi, 1973, acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, in four parts, each: 102 by 102 cm

£450,000-600,000 / US$ 580,000-775,000

Andy Warhol's four portraits of Graziella Lonardi Buontempo are an apt example of his 1970s corpus of Society Portraits, and a fitting tribute to one of the most important collectors of 20th- century Italy. This series marked Warhol's return to the medium of painting, following an eight-year hiatus during which he

focussed mainly on film.

Amongst the series, the present work is made exceptional by the importance of its sitter, who was undoubtedly one of the most well-known and significant characters in the Italian art world.

Indomitable in her roles as collector, curator, patron, and friend to several of Italy's most prominent 20th- century artists, Graziella Lonardi Buontempo is most famous for founding Gli Incontri Internazionali d'Arte in 1970 in Rome. Initial exhibitions were a huge success, and she soon had the support of titans of the Roman art world such as Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, and Giorgio de Chirico. Indeed, one of the most successful early exhibitions was a retrospective of the films of Andy Warhol. The artist travelled to Rome for the vernissage and stayed with Lonardi Buontempo in her apartment - the present work is the result of a Polaroid photograph he took of her during that time.

The present work was acquired directly from the artist in 1974, and has remained in the same family collection since.

LUCIO FONTANA

La Silla Barroca, 1946, plaster, 120 by 65 by 80 cm

£500,000-700,000 / US$ 645,000-905,000

Executed in 1946, La Silla Barroca is a distinguished example of Fontana's monumental sculpture, a genre which had a profound impact on his entire oeuvre. While Fontana today is predominantly well-known for his buchi (holes) and tagli (cuts), his artistic background is rooted firmly in the medium of sculpture, which undeniably proved paramount in articulating his conceptual understanding of space.

Portraying a seated statue-like figure, La Silla Barroca bears reference to classical Greek sculptures, with the pure white of its material aligning the work with the Parthenon Marble of the revered goddess of Hestia. However, instead of carving marble according to neo-Classical tradition, Fontana sculpted forms with his hands, taking advantage of the malleable plaster to create areas of fragility and lightness. Fontana himself poignantly described his ceramics as "a motionless earthquake".

Gifted by the artist to the Pablo Edelstein Collection in Buenos Aires, from which it was later acquired by the present owner, this is the first time that La Silla Barroca will be offered at auction.