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Lot Essay
The work is registered in the Fondazione Toti Scialoja, Rome.
The painting is one of the largest in scale that the artist produced in 1960. In 2002, the Scialoja Foundation presented a monumental solo exhibition for the artist at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. This followed a major retrospective held at GNAM in Rome following the artist's death in 1998.
The present lot is dated from a crucial period in the evolution of Toti Scialoja's artistic language. Executed in Rome in those few months between his return to Italy from New York (where he met his friends de Kooning, Motherwell, Scarpitta and Marca-Relli) and his subsequent three year stay in Paris were he moved to in 1961.
In New York, Scialoja began working on a series of larger scale works called Impronte emphasising their structure and composition within the pictorial space. The whites, blacks and greys often studded by red dots stand out from the large space of the canvas without any symbolic intent or sentimental aim. These deep tones might testify the anxiety in which Scialoja was caught in perceiving the last fatal loneliness of the creative act as well as some sort of human traces that identify themselves in the slow, rhythmical and inescapable pass of time.
The painting is one of the largest in scale that the artist produced in 1960. In 2002, the Scialoja Foundation presented a monumental solo exhibition for the artist at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. This followed a major retrospective held at GNAM in Rome following the artist's death in 1998.
The present lot is dated from a crucial period in the evolution of Toti Scialoja's artistic language. Executed in Rome in those few months between his return to Italy from New York (where he met his friends de Kooning, Motherwell, Scarpitta and Marca-Relli) and his subsequent three year stay in Paris were he moved to in 1961.
In New York, Scialoja began working on a series of larger scale works called Impronte emphasising their structure and composition within the pictorial space. The whites, blacks and greys often studded by red dots stand out from the large space of the canvas without any symbolic intent or sentimental aim. These deep tones might testify the anxiety in which Scialoja was caught in perceiving the last fatal loneliness of the creative act as well as some sort of human traces that identify themselves in the slow, rhythmical and inescapable pass of time.