The auction is accompanied by a highly curated catalog which offers collectors from all over the world masterpieces of Italian art from the early and late twentieth century, coming from private collections, and, in this case, from American, German, Swiss and Italian collections.
We begin this brief roundup by quoting the works from the first decades of the 900s and, precisely, mentioning an important work on paper from 1913 by Giacomo Balla, from the collection of Alfred Barr, the legendary founder and director of the MoMA in New York. The work was purchased by Barr during a trip to Rome (where he met the artist) in 1948, as a gift for his wife, Margherita Scolari Barr, an art historian. Flight of Swallows it is now up for auction with an estimate of 180-250.000 GBP. A very rare De Chirico from 1929 follows, The Archaeologists, painted in the years marking the artist's return to Classicism. The work carries an estimate of 600-800.000 GBP in the catalogue.
Also from the thirties one Still life from an Italian collection, work by Giorgio Morandi made in 1938 (val 650-850.000 GBP) very similar to the beautiful Still life which was proposed in 2000 in London during the edition dedicated to the Italian Sale of that year which was sold for 839.500 GBP.
Dominic Gnoli, Waistline, 1969 – est. 2.000.000 – 3.000.000 GBP
From an Italian private collection a magnificent Knight - portrayed at the crucial moment in which the fall is now revealed as inevitable - pperfectly chiseled and painted by Marino Marini; the sculpture has a valuation of 750.000-1.000.000 GBP.
Among the gems of the sale is a large horizontal canvas from a private German collection of the rare and very great Domenico Gnoli: it is Waistline, oil on canvas – with a valuation ranging between 2-3.000.000 GBP – was created at the peak of his career, a year before his death.
The Sixties are represented at a high level in this auction selection, at the heart of which is an Italian private collection (see ad hoc press release) with exclusively white works and all dated from 1965 to 1967, and specifically we mention a white Bonalumi (300-400.000 GBP), a white Simeti (80-120.000 GBP), a White theater di Fontana (400-600.000 GBP) and an absolute masterpiece by Enrico Castellani, vast White surface (234×280 cm) dated 1967 and estimated by experts at 1-1.500.000 GBP – see ad hoc press release.
From the Milanese collection of Alessandro Grassi, to remain in the Sixties, it comes Zero by Mario Schifano estimated 40-60.000 GBP and a beautiful work from the same year by Schifano but made by Tano Festa Worker's Street 83, 140×180cm, valued at 40-60,000 GBP.
Alighiero Boetti is present in London with some works, but here, for the sake of brevity, we mention the one from 1990, a rare work still from the Grassi collection entitled Pythagorean tables of 180×225 cm, in which Alighiero "plays" with the numbers 1,2,3, reproduced in all languages. The twenty squares that make up the work have an estimate of 1-1.500.000 GBP in the catalogue.
Alighiero Boetti, Pythagorean tables, 1990 – est. 1.000.000 – 1.500.000 GBP
It is dated 1962 and was in the collection of the artist Roberto Crippa Spatial Concept, Expectations (estimate of 1.500.000 – 2.000.000 GBP), five white denominations which was donated by Crippa, a true enthusiast of acrobatic aerial evolutions, to the collector who is auctioning it off, a great Milanese surgeon. This work has sealed the story of a friendship and also the miracle that the talented doctor worked by saving Roberto Crippa's lower limbs with repeated operations and treatments.
There are less than ten specimens with cuts on two registers by Lucio Fontana: il Spatial Concept, Expectations presented at auction is one of the very first, it was made in 1964 and is valued at 2.200.000 - 2.800.000 GBP.
Finally, an absolute masterpiece by Piero Manzoni, exhibited at the Tate Modern in London in 2005 and at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome in 1971: a beautiful and majestic (110 x 150 cm) Achrome museum quality, created by the revolutionary artist in 1958-1959. Of these monumental dimensions, Manzoni created only 9 specimens, one of which is kept at the Center Pompidou in Paris, one at the GAM in Turin, one at the Museum Modernkunst in Vienna, and another in the Rachowsky collection in Dallas. The work – kaolin on canvas – is estimated at 5-7.000.000 GBP.
