T his spring, the Contemporary Art | sale in Milan offers a window onto the most significant artistic avant-gardes of the 20th and 21st century through a refined selection of masterpieces coming from private Italian and European collections.
Within the sale, the most sought-after Italian artists of the last century such as Afro, Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri, alternate with great international masters like Cy Twombly, On Kawara and Sergio de Camargo, to name a few.
The sale sequence reveals unexpected correspondences between works by artists with radically different backgrounds: an alchemic Tutto Nero M by Alberto Burri hereby interplays with a quintessential Relief by Sergio de Camargo through the dichotomy of colour and non-colour; five intimate canvases by Peter Dreher from the Tag um Tag guter Tag series enter into a timeless dialogue with a seminal Natura morta by Giorgio Morandi; a minimalist sculpture by Fred Sandback investigates the relationship between art, space and viewer alongside the wall-sized installation Parnaso by Giulio Paolini.
The sale is further characterized by important historical ceramics, including a magnificent San Sebastiano bianco from 1962 by Leoncillo and a presentation of the Lucio Fontana’s most diverse ceramic production from the Concetto Spaziale series.
| Thursday 20 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Friday 21 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Saturday 22 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Sunday 23 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Monday 24 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Tuesday 25 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Wednesday 26 May | 10.00-13.00; 14.00-18.00 CET |
| Thursday 27 May | 10.00-13.00 CET |
The exhibition is open to the public on appointment only. Please contact Francesca Lumina to book an appointment at francesca.lumina@sothebys.com or you can call at +39 02 29500279.
The Arte Povera movement acted as a catalyst for the evolution of art in Italy throughout the transition from the Sixties to the Seventies. It represented a complex crossroads of enriching gazes that brought together, under the guidance of Germano Celant, the most disparate artists who shared a radically free and open poetic intent.
Italian Pop art has oscillated in-between the dimension of dreams and that of civil commitment. On one hand, the fantastic transfiguration of reality into icons taken from the mass media that allowed viewers to open up new windows and immerse themselves in skies full of stars, on the other hand, the social protests and political denunciation against the horrors of the Vietnam war.
That of Peter Dreher, Roman Opalka and On Kawara is a conceptual undertaking aimed at imprinting on canvas the inexorable passage of time. Be it through the obsessive painting of a glass under the subtle changes of light, the almost mechanical writing of a numeric progression towards infinity or the systematic documentation of calendar days, the underlying inquiry is a philosophical one that ultimately explores the meaning of life and death.
