Lot 10
  • 10

Piero Manzoni

Estimate
1,000,000 - 1,500,000 GBP
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Description

  • Piero Manzoni
  • Achrome
  • signed and variously inscribed on the reverse
  • kaolin on canvas
  • 70 by 50cm.
  • 27 5/8 by 19 3/4 in.
  • Executed in 1959.

Provenance

Galerie Mathias Fels, Paris
Galleria Notizie, Turin
Sale: Finarte, Milan, Arte Contemporanea, 1973
Marinella Pirelli Collection, Varese
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 20th Century Italian Art, 16 October 2006, Lot 29
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Mathias Fels, Piero Manzoni 1933-1963, 1969-70, illustrated

Literature

Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni, Milan 1975, p.146, no. 89 cg, illustrated
Freddy Battino and Luca Palazzoli, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Ragionato, Milan 1991, p. 270, no. 328, illustrated
Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Vol. II, Milan 2004, p. 432, no. 257, illustrated

Condition

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. Close inspection reveals a few hairline drying cracks mainly towards the base of some of the larger canvas folds, which are inherent to the artist's choice of media. No restoration is visible under ultraviolet light.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Piero Manzoni’s Achrome is an exquisite example of the artist’s most iconic series, and features a distinguished provenance and exhibition history. The importance of this work, in which the pleats are especially thick and magnificently textured, is attested to by its inclusion in a major Manzoni exhibition at Galerie Mathias Fels, Paris, in 1969; Achrome was prominently illustrated alongside the catalogue introduction. Following its sale at auction in Milan in 1973, it remained in the collection of Marinella Pirelli, a legendary Italian collector and photographer for 36 years before being purchased by the current owner. Created between 1958 and 1959, when the artist was at the apogee of his tragically short career, Achrome perfectly epitomises the essence of Manzoni’s artistic concerns and radical creative ideas at a time of immense cultural and political ferment within Europe. The 1950s saw an almost universal reaction against the horrors of World War II, and the subsequent re-drawing of the political map within Europe - coupled with economic and physical hardships and the mass fear engendered by the development of nuclear capability - led to a corresponding re-evaluation of the cultural zeitgeist alongside a questioning of the very purpose and nature of art itself. It was against this unprecedented background that Manzoni produced his remarkable Achromes; visions of extraordinary beauty and purity within a troubled world.

1959 had been a year of remarkable artistic activity for Manzoni due to his extensive participation with the ZERO artists, a group which featured an extraordinary selection of creative pioneers amongst its affiliates, including Yves Klein, Arman, Lucio Fontana and Enrico Castellani alongside Manzoni. Founded in Düsseldorf in 1958 by Otto Piene, Günther Uecker and Heinz Mack, ZERO sought to annihilate all forms of representation within art in order to celebrate the possibilities inherent in ‘nothingness’:  to move beyond the confines of the canvas and so attempt to penetrate the mysterious concept of the fourth dimension. Piene sought to encapsulate the aims of the group in a statement of 1958: "Zero is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new" (Otto Piene, 'Die Entstehung der Gruppe "Zero"', The Times Literary Supplement, 3 September 1964). Manzoni exhibited with the group in 1959 at Documenta I  and was to spend the next few years acting as a tireless bridge between the international members of ZERO, seeking to perpetuate the ideas and aims of the group, to the extent that Piene referred to the artist as a "messenger, carrying the Zero message all over Europe." (Otto Piene in: Heiner Stachelhaus, Zero: Mack Piene Uecker, Düsseldorf 1993, p.153).

Despite the commonality of interest with the concerns of the other ZERO artists and his extensive involvement with the group, Manzoni’s discovery of the potential of the Achrome actually anticipated ZERO’s founding. Following on from the publication of his manifesto, Per la scoperta di una zona di immagini, in 1956-7, Manzoni determined on finding a means of expressing the power of the subconscious through the creation of a completely subject-less, non-representational work, emphasising the surface and materials as the true focus of the piece. The Achromes operate in a world beyond abstraction, wholly removed from all extraneous, earthly distractions. Liberated from all chromatic or figurative implications and freed of all allusive and descriptive, allegorical and symbolic input, Manzoni’s unspeaking, colourless constructions express nothing but their very own state of being. The process of creation of the Achromes was simple but extraordinarily effective: Manzoni would commence by soaking the canvas first in plaster, then in kaolin, a form of soft white clay that was primarily used for the making of porcelain and china. The materials were then allowed to dry and assume their final form independently of the artist’s direction, introducing a thrilling degree of unpredictability into the process and infusing the surface of the work with a sense of innate vibrancy and life through its magnificent three-dimensionality.  Although Manzoni proceeded to experiment with various different materials (felt and cotton in 1960, wool and rabbit fur in 1961 and gravel and bread rolls in 1962) as a means of investigating the limitations and potential of the painted surface, ultimately it is the kaolin on pleated canvas that embodies the artist’s most effective attempt to minimise any sense of personality or gesture that might interfere with the crucial purity of the work. Manzoni himself had outlined the aim of ridding his art of external distractions: "The problem lies in freeing oneself from the extraneous details and useless gestures; details and gestures that are polluting the customary art of our day" (the artist, cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, The Serpentine Gallery, Piero Manzoni, 1998, p. 69).

Reminiscent of the folds to be found amongst drapery adorned classical statuary, Achrome’s pleats are simultaneously evocative of chiselled marble whilst seeming to convey a sensation of dynamism, engendered by the undulating, kaolin-induced, ripples. The utter lack of images or objects on which to focus causes the gaze to move beyond the edges of the work, reflecting the ZERO ideal of moving beyond the confines of the canvas ground to exploit the potential of the timeless, unbounded space beyond. Achrome arguably invokes Hegel’s theory, as outlined in Aesthetics (1835), that the ‘end of art’ is nigh: divorced of didactic, political or social comment, the traditional accoutrements of painting have been entirely discarded as an unnecessary distraction from the pure truth of the work itself. Achrome is effectively a blank slate, a tabula rasa on to which the onlooker is able to project their own individual interpretations, meditations and dreams. With his celebration of the monochrome, Manzoni magnificently transcends the formerly accepted traditions of the Western artistic canon to create a work of profound complexity and truly elegiac beauty.