Le Sofa is presented in Rome by Cristiana Collu, director of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and by Massimo Mininni curator of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, on 10 November at 18.30 pm at Palazzo Odescalchi, Piazza Santissimi Apostoli 81 The painting will be auctioned in Milan from Sotheby's on 23 November 2016. Le Sofa is an undisputed masterpiece by a cultured, acute, eclectic artist, difficult to "label".
The sofa – represented in an intelligent post-Magritte innovation – emanates, in its fixity, a melancholic and magical aura at the same time.
Or as Gnoli himself recounts in his text published in Letters and writings, 2004, Abscondita Editore: “…I always use simple elements and data, I don't want to add or subtract anything. I have never even had the desire to distort: I isolate and represent…”
PROVENANCE
Blanche Fabry Collection, Paris
Galerie Jan Krugier, Geneva
There purchased by the current owner in 1970
EXHIBITIONS
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Domenico Gnoli in his First American Exhibition of Paintings &Sculptures, 1969, n. 13, illustrated
Geneva, Galerie Marie-Louise Jeanneret, 1969
Geneva, Galerie Jan Krugier, Domenico Gnoli, 1970, p. 23, no. 26, illustrated
Darmstadt, Kunsthalle der Stadt, Domenico Gnoli, 1973, p. 56, no. 41, illustrated
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van Beuninger, Domenico Gnoli, 1973, p. 36, no.
45, illustrated full page
Paris, Center National d'Art Contemporain, Domenico Gnoli, 1973-1974, p. 81, illustrated
Brussels, Palais des Beaux Arts, Domenico Gnoli, 1974, p. 81, illustrated
Verona, Palazzo Forti, Domenico Gnoli. Anthological, Milan 1982-83, p. 41, no. 23, illustrated in full page color BIBLIOGRAPHY Luigi Carluccio, Domenico Gnoli, Lausanne 1974, p. 130, illustrated Luigi Carluccio, Domenico Gnoli, New York 1975, p. 130, illustrated Luigi Carluccio, presentation cat. XXXVIII International Art Biennale, Venice, 'From Nature to Art – from Art to Nature', Palazzo Correr, July 1978, p. 236 Vittorio Sgarbi, Gnoli, Milan, FMR, 1983, p. 147, illustrated in color Made in the late 37s, Le Sofa, which also owes some credit to American Pop culture – let us recall the many years spent by Gnoli in New York, where he died at the age of 1970 in 1969 – is far from the language of American art of those years and has nothing to do with advertising and the consumer society. The artist's first major exhibition in America, which took place in December XNUMX, in the gallery of the famous art dealer and collector Sidney Janis (pillar of the American art and culture market in the second half of the twentieth century and particularly attentive to Italian artists of great innovative power, such as the Futurists and Lucio Fontana, as well as Gnoli), represented in fact the official recognition by the international artistic world for the Italian painter. FOR
