Michelangelo Pistoletto

Mana Art Market, Roma
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1971

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the illustration fails to fully convey the reflective nature of the work, and the overall tonality of the dove is warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in good condition. There are a number of media accretions and tiny irregularities to the surface in isolated places. There is a faint, vertical rub mark to the upper edge, approximately 10cm. from the right corner. Very close inspection under raking light reveals two shallow and thin horizontal scratches (about 15 cm. long) to the centre right of the upper right quadrant with a few further hairline and unobtrusive scratches elsewhere. Close inspection reveals a small number of tiny specks of paint loss and accretions to the dove. There is a shallow indentation to the upper right corner.
"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."

“In my mirror paintings the image co-exists with every present moment (…) the current time of the future is already included in the continuous mobility of the images, in the constantly renewed present of the reflection.”
Michelangelo Pistoletto quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Centre, Pistoletto, Division and Multiplication of the Mirror, 1988, p. 31

Demonstrating a powerful yet tranquil presence set against the endless possibilities of its reflective and ever-shifting polished stainless steel background, Colomba is a highly poetic and symbolically charged example of Pistoletto’s seminal Mirror Paintings.

A key figure of postwar Italian art, Michelangelo Pistoletto received critical acclaim from the 1960s onwards for his mirror works which challenge a long-established understanding of figuration. By enveloping the beholder with their surroundings within the picture plane, Pistoletto brings the aesthetic object down from its pedestal of contemplation to reunite artwork and viewer, an extension of the avant-garde’s longstanding goal of merging art and life.

Marcel Duchamp famously proposed the idea that it is the beholder who creates art. This statement about the transitivity of the artwork is especially pertinent when applied to the work of Pistoletto, inviting the viewer to participate and become an integral part of the artwork. He explained, “The mirror paintings could not live without an audience. They were created and re-created according to the movement and to the interventions they reproduced” (the artist in conversation with G. Boursier in Sipario, Milan, April 1969).

By linking art and life in an ever-changing spectacle, Colomba encourages the viewer to be more than a passive beholder and to rather become an active participant, simultaneously exploring the realm of relationships and social interactions. Indeed, Pistoletto never shied away from socio-political messages and the motifs chosen for his mirror paintings are far more complex than they appear at first glance. They are, quite literally, a mirror held in the face of contemporary society. The artist explained that an often simple subject chosen acted as, “a univocal signal. It can correspond to an image 'snapped' at a certain historical moment. But in my mirror paintings the image coexists with every present moment. Old paintings exist today without containing the presence of our time; their only presence is that of their own time. It is our job to make them live, criticise them, locate them historically, according to our present-day interest” (the artist quoted in: Germano Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York 1989, p. 31).

In 1998 Pistoletto founded Cittadellarte, a laboratory for thought that through its residency programme, allowed artists to merge with other foundations of social thought such as economics, religion and politics. This artistic undertaking of creating an idealised public sphere was a collective experimentation which subversively exposed the world it negated. Although it was founded comparatively recently, it manifests Pistoletto’s long-standing engagement with responsible interdisciplinary action through art.

The present work is a particularly poignant example of this engagement. The dove, as a universal symbol of peace, has long fascinated artists – especially during troubled times. Picasso for instance has always been fond of pigeons and doves – his father was breeding them – and started painting them as a child. In addition to wonderfully melancholic paintings such as Child with a Dove (1901) from his critical blue period, Picasso’s lithograph La Colombe (1949) was chosen by Louis Aragon to illustrate the poster of the Paris Peace Conference. At the forefront of the international Peace Movement since Guernica (1937), Picasso continued to paint doves as symbols of peace for many years after the end of WWII for various peace conferences around Europe. The apotheosis of Pistoletto’s oeuvre, the mirror paintings from the mid to late 1960s until the early 1970s of which Colomba is a delightful epitome, were often socially engaged, in response to the turmoil of anti-war movements and the political upheavals of 1968. Delicately painted on tissue paper then transferred by hand onto the stainless steel surface (a technique Pistoletto would abandon for screenprinting in 1972), the solitary bird gazes beyond the picture space, slightly turned away from the viewer and one is left with quiet reflection and immersion in the picture plane.