Salvatore Scarpitta

Leo Castelli Gallery, New York

New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Extramurals, January - February, 1959, cat. no. 20 (titled The Traveler and exhibited prior to the addition of the artist's wood frame)
Milan, Galleria dell'Ariete, Scarpitta 1958-1963, October - November 1964 (titled The Traveler and exhibited prior to the addition of the artist's wood frame)
Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Salvatore Scarpitta, March - July 1977, p. 13, illustrated
New York, Leo Castelli Gallery, Salvatore Scarpitta – American Cycle 1958 - 1982, November - December 1982

Exh. Cat., Milan, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea, Salvatore Scarpitta 1958 - 1985, November 1985 - February 1986, p. 22, illustrated
Luigi Sansone, Salvatore Scarpitta: Catalogue Raisonné, Milan, 2005, cat. no. 271, pp. 44, 177 and 324, illustrated in color

This work is in very good condition overall. The canvas is mounted to the wood backing. All of the elements are well intact. The variation in surface texture and coloration is due to the artist’s working method and choice of materials. There is some fine pigment separation to the canvas in the upper right quadrant of the composition. There is fine cracking to the pigment on the wood backing with minor associated losses along the left and bottom sides and some scattered surface scratches.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Executed in 1959 and 1961, Facetowel Print (The Traveler) and Double Halter hail from Salvatore Scarpitta’s pioneering series of 'torn' paintings initiated in 1957. Representing the apex of Scarpitta’s art historical innovations, Facetowel Print and Double Halter speak to opposing tensions in the artist’s work; they are at once dense, rigorous schemas of interlocking canvas evolved from the industrial machinery of war and the dirt race track, and earthy, living constructions that rely on open space, implied wounds, and natural pigmentation. Writing about Scarpitta’s radical canvases, B.H. Friedman says, “What else can we call them? Sculptural paintings? Painterly sculptures? Painting containing sculpture? Sculpture containing painting? Vehicles of painting and sculpture? What? There is, thanks to him, no easy label… Consistently, every work is open, the carrier and the carried, through everything there is a flow of fresh air and energy” (“Salvatore Scarpitta: an Aesthetic History,” in Salvatore Scarpitta, Exh. Cat., Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, 1977, p. 12).

Rising to prominence in 1957 after two breakthrough solo exhibitions at the Galleria del Naviglio in Milan and at the Galleria La Taratuga in Rome, in 1958 Scarpitta met gallerist Leo Castelli, later explaining: "with Leo a great friendship was born, and a great, immediate interest in my work.  Leo and I were like brothers" (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., Castello di Volpaia, Salvatore Scarpitta, 1992, p. 14). The following January of 1959, Facetowel Print (The Traveler) was exhibited in Scarpitta’s first show at Castelli Gallery in New York, Extramurals. Originally exhibited turned 180 degrees as only the bandaged canvas and titled The Traveler, Scarpitta added the “X” armature backing at a later point, and retitled the work Facetowel Print, making this among the earliest works employing this important motif.  Speaking of the first works with this sign, Scarpitta remarks: “In America before a building is demolished they tape an X on the windows. The X is there to remind people that the building has been condemned. Something about the X’s, barely noticed, struck me that year, to the point where I took a frame and put an X inside it. It seemed like a warning, and at the same time this X filled the space and created a reason for my intervention. Of course the X didn’t have any geometric sense, it had only the meaning of saying ‘stop’, ‘that’s enough’; it was a warning…” (the artist quoted in: Salvatore Scarpitta: Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Luigi Sansone, Milan, 2005, p. 72).

In Double Halter, Scarpitta transforms the stretcher into an armature around which swathes of monochrome vermilion red torn canvas are rhythmically wrapped and woven.  Describing his own method, Scarpitta expressed a certain degree of removal from artistic control: "I didn't have a plan, I took the canvas, I cut it, reversed it and wrapped it around the frame" (the artist quoted in: Exh. Cat., Castello di Volpaia, Splendente, 1992, p. 17). Such investigation of the two-dimensional canvas is frequently associated with Lucio Fontana, yet evidence suggests that Fontana's first Concetto Spaziale was immediately preceded by a visit to Scarpitta's studio in 1957. Piero Dorazio has written of this event: "when Fontana came to Rome I took him to Salvatore's studio... The next year I went to visit Fontana and his studio was full of canvases with the famous slashes, which could only have been suggested by the swathing bands of Scarpitta" (Piero Dorazio, “For Salvatore Scarpitta” in: Exh. Cat., Centro d'Arte Arbur, Scarpitta, 2000, pp. 61-62). Scarpitta's involvement in the cultivation of a new artistic generation spearheaded by the Arte Povera movement can, therefore, not be over-emphasized.

Having returned to America after two decades in the country of his ancestors, Scarpitta’s work also resonates with that of his New York contemporaries. B.H. Friedman writes, “It is no accident that Scarpitta’s obsession with thingness emerges in the late fifties at precisely the same time as that of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, two other artists whom Castelli recognizes early. Each of the three, working independently, assimilates the physicality of Abstract Expressionism and anticipates the subject matter of Pop” (“Salvatore Scarpitta: an Aesthetic History,” in Salvatore Scarpitta, Exh. Cat., Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas, 1977, p. 12).

Two of the most revolutionary works to emerge during the early 1960s, Facetowel Print (The Traveler) and Double Halter thus belong to the highest tier of Scarpitta’s oeuvre. Unique for their conflation of sculpture and painting, and their dynamic, nearly Futurist fragmentation of the pictorial plane propelled by a visceral object-forward presence, the present works argue for Scarpitta’s position as one of the most influential artists of both the Italian and American post-war period.