PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE ENRICO PEDRINI, GENOA Enrico Pedrini (1940-2012) was an Italian visionary, theorist and collector of Conceptual Art. With a career spanning half a century, the lecturer of epistemology continually sought out top-tier work that challenged, moved and surprised the art world. He ultimately championed Anthropological and Conceptual Art with such books and articles as John Cage, Happenings and Fluxes (1986), The Quantic Machine and Second Avant-Garde (1991) in which he discusses the relation between quantum theory and the visual arts movements of the 1960’s. Pedrini possessed a lifelong passion for creativity, an attribute that not only served him well in his career as a lecturer and curator, but also influenced his collecting and enabled him to assemble an extraordinary collection of artworks distinguished by their quality and breadth. As a collector he was deeply engaged with bold and innovative philosophies of the future, leaving a lasting legacy on the history of art as a whole. Pedrini’s collection focused on Dada, Fluxus, Minimal Art, Arte Povera, Vienna Aktionism and Graffiti Art. Steering the trajectory of Conceptual Art in Europe, Pedrini studied the interaction of dissipating systems, chaos theory and new potentials of art. He curated a number of major international exhibitions, in venues such as Studio Oggetto in Milan, the Persano Gallery in Turin, the Musée d'art Moderne et d'art Contemporain in Nice and the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center in New York City. Upon curating the Taiwanese Pavilion at the 46th Venice Biennale, along with Wolfgang Becker in 1995, Pedrini proved himself as an influential figure within the twentieth century art world.Christie’s is pleased to present two outstanding sculptures from the Pedrini Collection, Sol LeWitt’s 1974 Incomplete Open Cube 9/5 and Donald Judd’s 1969 singular stack, 25276. These masterworks of the minimalist era celebrate artistic interpretation of geometry in space, as a daring entry into the contemporary canon. The LeWitt, with its purity in color draws its commanding presence not only from its elegant line as a pared-down rendition of the full cubic form, but also from the negative space it brings into focus. Its light and open motif plays against its durable steel medium. The Judd, to a similar extent, achieves a balance with its own formal elements. Its brass and bronze structural components provide the robust framework from the more delicate, transparent Plexiglas at the work’s core, highlighting the sculpture’s glow and almost transcendental aura. These two works, though connected through similar conception and form, each stand on their own as critical examples from the early contemporary period.

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)

Incomplete Open Cube 9/5

Details

Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)
Incomplete Open Cube 9/5
painted steel
43 1/4 x 41 1/4 x 43 1/8 in. (109.8 x 104.7 x 109.5 cm.)
Executed in 1974. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Provenance

Galleria Bertesca, Genoa
Enrico Pedrini, 1974
By descent from the above to the present owners

Exhibited

Verona, Museo di Castelvecchio, Empirica: l’arte tra addizione e sottrazione, July-August 1975.

Brought to you by

Alexander Berggruen

aberggruen@christies.com 212 636 2100

Lot Essay

“Because of the possibilities for multiplication inherent in the grid form, a basic and seemingly unlimited vocabulary was at LeWitt's disposal... [the] serial form produced multipart pieces of finite order but infinite complexity.” (A. Legg, Sol LeWitt, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, p. 9)

Incomplete Open Cube 9/5

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Lot Essay

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