Lot 36 : Emilio Vedova (b. 1919)

Emilio Vedova - 1919-2006

Auction Location: United Kingdom - 2004
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Artist or Maker:

Emilio Vedova (b. 1919)

Title:

Dal ciclo della protesta '58

Description:

Dal ciclo della protesta '58
signed, inscribed and dated 'EMILIO VEDOVA-ITALIA EPOCA 1958 PROTESTA 1958-NI' (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
57 1/8 x 74 7/8in. (145 x 190cm.)
Painted in 1958

Provenance:

Galerie Hans Neuendorf, Hamburg.
Acquired from the above by the present owner circa 1985.

Exhibited:

Munich, Galerie Günther Franke, Emilio Vedova, June-July 1959, no. 7.
Milan, Galeria Blu, Emilio Vedova, February 1960.
Milan, Istituto Finanziario per L'Arte, Mostra della Critica Italiana, 1961, no. 112.
Bari, Pinacoteca Provinciale, Aspetti dell' Informale, January-February 1971.
Eindhoven, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Vedova, February-March 1982, no. 1 (illustrated in colour, p. 5).
Cologne, Galerie Thomas Borgmann, Emilio Vedova Ölbilder 1958-1962, May-July 1983 (illustrated, unpaged).

Notes:

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR

One of the 'Protest Cycle' of works that first 'burst forth' from Vedova's brush in 1953, Dal ciclo della protesta is an articulate and spontaneous 'cry for freedom' from the height of Vedova's so-called Informel period.

Although greatly inspired by the work of Wols' whom Vedova considered to be the founder of the Informel style, the artist's relationship with Informel painting is not as straightforward as it may at first seem. Vedova embraced the gestural freedom and the emphasis on material of the Informel but, his often highly politicized paintings are not simply the products of an unfettered gestural abstraction but an often complex and highly conscious orchestration of abstract form. Vedova's highly material use of the gestural mark is spontaneously layered in a measured way so as to create a shimmering pattern of often dynamic abstract form which, when seen together builds a cohesive sense of a constructed whole, of there being an order within the apparent chaos. It is a carefully contrived effect that seems to show his paintings simultaneously forming and unforming themselves. In the process, these works articulate a cohesive portrait of a world in a constant state of waxing and waning, of becoming and disintegrating.

In attempting to paint in this way Vedova drew heavily on his extensive knowledge of the art of the past. In particular he drew on the aesthetics of dada and on the dynamism of Futurism - something which, in a work like Dal ciclo della protesta, he has attempted to use as a means of protest and of reinvigorating what he saw as a stagnant contemporary situation in the arts.

Vedova described his works of the late 1950s and early 1960s as 'a cry for freedom at all costs', and as a way out of the current stasis he saw in the Informel's preoccupation with 'materia'. 'People find themselves again in matter', he explained of the times in which he found himself, 'and through the imminence of matter a "blank tablet" is achieved. Europe's consciousness plunges into darkness. Sartre humiliates mankind by constantly keeping before one's own eyes one's permanent situation, since one will get worn out. Didn't this situation originate a morbid taste and the exacerbated formalisation of matter and trait. A sort of self-defence, an extreme consciousness, contributed to make it possible for me not to be lost in such a state...Seeing the tension of my bursting and erupting traits, one finds the right label at once; Informel! Yet this is superficial. My works are being built up... and these structures are the structures of my own consciousness.' (Emilio Vedova Scontro di Situazioni lecture on Sept. 27 1962.)

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