Milan – Dedicated to offering the best of 20^th century Italian art, Christie’s annual auction in Milan, now part of the Thinking Italian series aligned with our global Post-War and Contemporary sales, will take place on 3 and 4 of April. Highlighted by Lucio Fontana’s intense pink-red Concetto Spaziale, Attesa (illustrated above left, estimate: €800,000 – 1,200,000), the sale features historical works by major icons such as Gino Severini, Alberto Boccioni, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni, through to a group of contemporary works led by Gino De Dominicis. The auction also includes a refined group of two still lifes and one landscape by Giorgio Morandi; a special selection from the series of "lattices" by Piero Dorazio; a collection of iconic 1960s works by Mario Schifano and an important group of paintings which trace the evolution of figurative art in Italy between the 1920s and the 1940s. A selection of highlights from Thinking Italian Milan will tour to the MAXXI Museum in Rome on 15 March, followed by Turin on 20 March, before the full sale exhibition in Milan from 29 March to 2 April 2019.

The sale also includes a group of 9 works by post-war artists including Carla Accardi, Giulio Paolini Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti and Piero Dorazio, the proceeds of which will benefit the Water Academy SRD, an international platform operating in Higher Education, Scientific Research and in the organization of an annual symposium, in order to promote a new culture of water.

Mariolina Bassetti, International Chairman, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Continental Europe, comments: ‘This year, our rebranded flagship sale ‘Thinking Italian Milan’ continues our tailor-made approach to satisfy the needs of our national and growing international collector group. After the launch of Thinking Italian in London two years ago, and the ongoing success for Italian art, we look forward to presenting international collectors in Milan with a tightly curated selection of pioneering Italian artists of the 20^th century.’

Renato Pennisi, Director and Senior Specialist, Head of Sale, Christie's Italy comments – ‘This season, we are pleased to present collectors with a broad scope of works that trace the history of Italy’s prolific and varying artistic culture throughout the 20^th century. Christie’s continues to be the only leading auction house to offer sales dedicated to 20^th century Italian art and Milan confirms its status as a key location to buy the very best of this category.’

THE POETIC COMPOSITIONS OF GIORGIO MORANDI

A group of three elegant and lyrical works by Giorgio Morandi are presented in the sale. Painted in 1952, Morandi’s Natura morta illustrated on page 1, embodies the contemplative, timeless nature that characterises the iconic still life paintings produced by the artist in the aftermath of the Second World War (estimate: €700,000–1,000,000). Another Natura Morta, executed in 1947, (illustrated above left, estimate: €500,000 - 700,000) depicts an equally poetic composition of household objects in delicate, muted tones of ivory, grey and ochre. Forming a significant portion of his practice, Morandi’s landscapes present a masterful technique in portraying rural tranquillity and abstract scenery. Influenced by Cezanne, Morandi’s landscape entitled Paesaggio, produced in 1943, is luminous and rich, capturing the almost shadowless light of noon, and demonstrates the great influence masters of the past had on his oeuvre (illustrated above right, estimate: €280,000 – 350,000).

20^th CENTURY ICONS OF ITALIAN ART

The sale includes several examples of Lucio Fontana’s iconic Concetto Spaziale series, most notably a seductive pink-red single cut canvas, illustrated on page 1, as well as a blue Concetto Spaziale, Attese, from 1967 (illustrated above left, estimate: €350,000 – 500,000). Superficie alluminio is a quintessential example of one of Enrico Castellani’s signature Superfici or ‘Surfaces’, the career-defining series which he begun in 1959 and continued to explore for the rest of his life (estimate: €300,000—500,000, illustrated above right). Bianco, made in 1954 by Alberto Burri, (estimate: €300,000 -500,000, illustrated above centre) is part of the artist’s radical series, the Bianchi, which he began in 1949. The present lot was given by Burri to the father of the present owner on the occasion of his wedding in 1954.

Following on from strong results achieved last year in Milan, when Piero Manzoni’s Achrome achieved a world record price for a work of Post-War and Contemporary Art in Italy, we are pleased to offer collectors the opportunity to acquire one of the artist’s most iconic bodies of work, Uovo Scultura (estimate: €100,000 – 150,000). Consisting of a single hard-boiled egg, adorned with Manzoni’s thumbprint in black ink, this lot is a precious relic, an artefact of Manzoni’s famous piece of performance art entitled Consumption of Art by the Art-Devouring Public, held in Milan on 21 July 1960.

An opportunity to acquire an outstanding example of Gino de Dominicis’ beguiling oeuvre. We are pleased to offer Senza titolo, which comes with excellent provenance and exhibition history as it was acquired directly from the artist by the present owner and exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia in 1993 and in the artist’s retrospectives Moma PS1 in 2009 (estimate: €100,000–150,000, illustrated left).

PIERO DORAZIO

Evolving from his earlier experiments with Mondrian-esque grids, Dorazio’s canvases of the late 1950s and early 1960s embody his fascination with a visual consciousness. This is evident in Berlin Air, which is offered by the Paolo Brodbeck collection to benefit The Brodbeck Foundation. Executed in 1962, this work is made by overlapping and intersecting strokes of thin paint to create parallel planes that, when viewed together, form a web of materialised colour (estimate: €150,000–200,000, illustrated right). Two more paintings by Dorazio are offered in the sale: Giada I, made in 1959, is a rare example of the artist’s abstract paintings that mimics the surface of jade (estimate: €150,000 – 200,000), and Introspezione from 1963, (illustrated left, €170,000–200,000) the proceeds of which will be used to support the various activities of the Water Academy SRD.

MARIO SCHIFANO AND THE 1960s

In the early 1960s, Mario Schifano dramatically changed the direction of his art. Having erupted onto the Italian art scene with a series of large-scale, purely monochrome works, he made a dramatic return to figuration, integrating the signs and symbols of the urban metropolis to create Pop-like images that question the very nature of representation itself. Works of art from this significant period include Elemento per Paesaggio (estimate: €120,000 – 180,000, illustrated above left) and Particolare di propaganda (estimate: €160,000 – 200,000, illustrated above centre left). Along with these logos, emblazoned stencil-like and fragmentary upon the canvas, Schifano also began to produce works that appropriated themes from art history, in particular the landscape. Both from 1965, Cielo special con anima (estimate: €130,000 – 160,000, illustrated above right) and Albero (estimate: €80,000 – 120,000, illustrated above centre right) encapsulate this part of the artist’s practice.

FIGURATIVE ART

Magic Realism is a term first coined to describe a group of German and Italian painters who approached figurative representation with specific emphasis on elements such as purism, immobility and objectivity. In Italy, this connotation referred specifically to those painters who succeeded in giving life to remarkable almost photographic naturalism impregnated with enigmatic and disquieting atmosphere. This is exemplified in the works of Ubaldo Oppi, featured above with Giovani donne al mare (estimate: €80,000 -120,000) and Contadino a Sera (estimate: €60,000-80,000, illustrated left).   

Another figurative movement of the time, known as the Italiens in Paris included De Chirico, Alberto Savinio, and Mario Tozzi. Visions of surreal architecture and metaphysical atmospheres were characteristic of this zeitgeist, represented here by a work by Mario Tozzi entitled Aragonese (estimate: €60,000 – 80,000, illustrated right).