Lot 3418* - A185 PostWar & Contemporary - Saturday, 30. June 2018, 02.00 PM
TURI SIMETI
(Alcamo 1929 - lives and works in Milan)
Tre ovali blu. 1997.
Acrylic on canvas.
Signed and dated on the stretcher: Simeti 1997, also with directional arrow.
80 x 80 cm.
With the confirmation of authenticity by the Archivio Turi Simeti, Milan. This work is recorded in the archive under the number: 1997-BL0801.
Provenance:
- Private collection Italy.
- Private collection Southern Germany.
Turi Simeti was born in Alcamo, Sicily in 1929. In 1959 he moved to Rome, where by chance he made acquaintance of Alberto Burri. This encounter awakened his interest in art and he began to work as a self-taught artist. After numerous trips to London, Paris and Brussels, in 1965 Simeti ended up in Milan, where he still lives today.
Milan of the 1960s was characterised by the revolutionary art of Lucio Fontana and its further development amongst the younger generation with what was known as ZERO art. Turi Simeti joined the ZERO art movement, which in Milan was influenced particularly by Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani. That this artistic tendency encompassed the whole of Europe in the 1960s, is shown in the fact that, alongside the Italian artists such as Simeti, Castellani and Bonalumi, the German artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, co-founders of ZERO art, also took part in the ground-breaking exhibition “Avantgarde ZERO” at Fontana’s atelier. For Simeti his international career began with this exhibition and continues to this day.
Simeti is interested in the interplay and interaction between light, space and movement, and explores this with the help of his canvas reliefs.
The present piece is a typical example: the midnight blue monochrome canvas is pierced by three oval forms, the oval being his preferred shape because its position can easily be changed. The ovals are part of the canvas and in creating a relief, they shift the piece into the three-dimensional. Depending on the incidence of light and the perspective of the viewer, the work changes, and we as viewers can directly influence the pictorial space depending on where we are standing. What is unique in his oeuvre is the reduction to one pictorial form and one colour, and thereby everything is concentrated on the work’s plasticity.
There are clear parallels with Lucio Fontana, who, with his cuts in the two-dimensional canvas, opened it up to three dimensions.
Provenance:
- Private collection Italy.
- Private collection Southern Germany.
Turi Simeti was born in Alcamo, Sicily in 1929. In 1959 he moved to Rome, where by chance he made acquaintance of Alberto Burri. This encounter awakened his interest in art and he began to work as a self-taught artist. After numerous trips to London, Paris and Brussels, in 1965 Simeti ended up in Milan, where he still lives today.
Milan of the 1960s was characterised by the revolutionary art of Lucio Fontana and its further development amongst the younger generation with what was known as ZERO art. Turi Simeti joined the ZERO art movement, which in Milan was influenced particularly by Agostino Bonalumi and Enrico Castellani. That this artistic tendency encompassed the whole of Europe in the 1960s, is shown in the fact that, alongside the Italian artists such as Simeti, Castellani and Bonalumi, the German artists Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, co-founders of ZERO art, also took part in the ground-breaking exhibition “Avantgarde ZERO” at Fontana’s atelier. For Simeti his international career began with this exhibition and continues to this day.
Simeti is interested in the interplay and interaction between light, space and movement, and explores this with the help of his canvas reliefs.
The present piece is a typical example: the midnight blue monochrome canvas is pierced by three oval forms, the oval being his preferred shape because its position can easily be changed. The ovals are part of the canvas and in creating a relief, they shift the piece into the three-dimensional. Depending on the incidence of light and the perspective of the viewer, the work changes, and we as viewers can directly influence the pictorial space depending on where we are standing. What is unique in his oeuvre is the reduction to one pictorial form and one colour, and thereby everything is concentrated on the work’s plasticity.
There are clear parallels with Lucio Fontana, who, with his cuts in the two-dimensional canvas, opened it up to three dimensions.
CHF 18 000 / 24 000 | (€ 18 560 / 24 740)
Sold for CHF 20 300 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.