For the second annual appointment, Sotheby's returns to Milan on 28 and 29 November for the second Milanese auction after the one in April which set the Italian record by selling a work by Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale from 1967 for 2.409.000 euros.
About forty lots selected by the Milanese department will be presented at the Milan Evening Sale in light of the recent positive results for Italian art at international auctions.
The works of the fifties
Exhibited in 1955 by the famous New York gallerist Catherine Viviano, promoter of Italian Informal Art on the American and international market, Afro's Persian 2 is one of the most convincing works of 1954 created in the creative New York years of the artist from Udine. The canvas, exhibited in the Milanese monograph at Palazzo Reale in 1992, has an estimate of 180.000 - 250.000 euros. From the private Rome collection of Alberto Burri comes Sportello from 1955 (estimate: 100.000 – 150.000).
The works of the sixties
In the catalog there are two further Butters, produced in the 1961s: one is called Combustione and dates back to 200.000 (estimated at 300.000 – 500.000), the other is Bianco Plastica (estimated at 700.000 – 1968) which differs from contemporary works in terms of size and subject. Executed in XNUMX, Bianco Plastica embodies a mature example of the Plastiche series, the most celebrated by the artist from Città di Castello.
1968 is also the year of Schifano's painting, formerly from Lucio Amelio's Modern Art Agency (detail of Oasi; estimate 100.000 – 150.000) and a small group of Roman pop works such as La Porta Grigia by Tano Festa (estimate 90.000 – 120.000) and La Stanza delle Ideologie by Franco Angeli, a 1969 masterpiece, full of ancient and modern symbols, taken from the daily contact that the artist had with the street: wolves, eagles, hammers and sickles, etc. (estimate 50.000 – 70.000).
The works of the seventies
From the same years come La Contestazione, a magnificent brass by Melotti, on display at the GAM in Turin in 1972 (estimate 80.000 - 120.000). Also by Melotti, from a private collection in Madrid, La Danza della Sposa, is the large brass, tulle and fabric, from 1979, already exhibited in Venice at the Fortuny, in Lugano, Brussels and Madrid (estimate 150.000 - 200.000).
The sculptures
Among the sculptures in the auction, the Great Mutilation, one of the examples of Leoncillo's large ceramic sculpture, stoneware and enamels with a wooden base (130 cm high and an estimate between 400.000 - 500.000), similar to a specimen recently sold in London for over £720.000.
Leoncillo, one of the most important sculptors of the 900th century, in the 50s abandoned the Realism and the Figurative that characterized his pre-war works and embraced the Informal and Abstraction, well exemplified in the sculpture proposed in the catalogue.
The 1962 work has a remarkable exhibition pedigree: two Venice Biennales, the III Exposition Internationale de sculpture contemporaine in Paris at the Rodin Museum in 1966, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome in 1979, Ferrara and Spoleto in 1983 and in 1985 the Gallery of Modern Art in Verona.
The Pistoletto and one of the Boettis in the auction are from 1989: the portrait of Pistoletto's daughter, Armona, Red Painter With Dark Pants, silkscreen on stainless steel (150×125 cm), is valued between 250.000 – 350.000 while Alternandosi and Dividendosi (Positive -Negative) by Alighiero Boetti has an estimate of 280.000 – 350.000.
Another important poor artist in this selection is Jannis Kounellis, present with Untitled (5) from 1959 (estimate between 300.000 – 400.000), formerly from the Milanese Malabarba and Gian Ferrari collections. The work has a precious date, it dates back to 1959, the year before the one-man show at the famous La Tartaruga gallery in Rome that consecrated Kounellis.
Italians
Among the works by Lucio Fontana selected for this auction, we recall the aniline from 1958, Concetto Spaziale, Forma (estimate 250.000 – 350.000), from the collection of Giovanna Bonino, Buenos Aires, a historical place for Fontana because it is here that he signed the famous Manifesto Blanco. This work was exhibited, also in 1959, at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.
Acquired by the current owner's family directly from the artist in the mid-1963s is the cut from 1964-400.000 Concetto Spaziale, Attese (estimate 500.000 – XNUMX) made by Lucio Fontana in the last period of his life. The cut is in the center of the work, on a very intense green canvas and it is a wound, a perfectly preserved fissure.
Between 250.000 – 350.000 is the assessment entrusted by the department for each of the two large, almost square Castellani, the Red Surface (1985) and the Blue Surface (1995). Again, a large canvas by Renato Guttuso (to whom the GAM of Turin has dedicated a monograph this year) Three Workers and a Prostitute is estimated at between 80.000 – 120.000. Two still lifes by Morandi follow, one from 1959, from an important private collection (estimate between 600.000 – 800.000) and the other from 1923, also from a private collection, which has a valuation of 800.000 – 1.200.000. XNUMX and represents one of the first Still Lifes by the Bolognese artist.
In the catalog an international private collection with works by Boetti (Tutto from 1987, estimated between 400.000 - 600.000), Dorazio (Collier, 1963; between 100.000 - 150.000) and an oil from 1961 by Lucio Fontana Spatial concept, gold, material and expensive color to the history of art and very topical today (see the recent London auction The Midas Touch) estimated between 800.000 – 1.200.000.
And for the first time on the Italian market a Basquiat, Untitled, from the same collection, dated 1981, collage and mixed technique on cardboard, from the Car series, already on display in Lausanne at the city's Museum of Contemporary Art (estimate between 300.000 – 400.000). Machines are a subject that Basquiat paints throughout his short life and accompany his stylistic evolution. His paintings convey a system of aesthetic values with references to the street, to African art, to New York graffiti.
Other international names in this fall selection include Twombly (included with Untitled, a small 1961 paper; estimated 200.000 – 300.000) Georges Mathieu, Alex Katz (with a large 1999 canvas, Harbor 10; estimated 200.000 – 300.000), Peter Halley, Julian Opie, Matta and Hans Hartung.
