Fausto Melotti

Acquired directly from the artist by the previous owner in the 1970s

Melotti’s art - at once secret, poetic and lyrical - illuminates the intersection between classical sculpture and the birth of the avant garde. Integrating forms and ideas from multiple artistic contexts, his work synthesises the diverse Italian cultural veins of music, sculpture, art and architecture in an effort to create the ‘total artwork’. A staunchly independent artistic figure within the artistic panorama of Post War Italian art, Melotti’s studies into engineering, mathematics and poetry guided him along an artistic path whereby structure, matter and composition are infused with poetical suggestion.

Throughout his career, Melotti sought to explore the possibilities of incorporating the musical Counterpoint theory, (the simultaneous combination of two or more melodies), into art, and by the time he conceived Contrappunto Domestico, the artist had developed and refined this concept into a symphony of highly elegant forms. Suspended within the simple linear framework of thin brass rods, Melotti combines the figurative and the abstract in composition of profound balance, weightlessness and harmony.