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Lot Essay
In the mid 1980s Emilio Vedova embarked on an outstanding series of works that extended the freeform logic of his earlier, highly gestural form of painting into a new dimension. In three series known as the Dischi (discs), the Tondi (circles) and the Oltre (beyond), Vedova expanded this fluid and energised painterly play with space and matter into and beyond a sense of totality and wholeness in a sequence of circular format works.
One of the Oltre, this work, Oltre- 3 (Ciclo II-Rosso '85) (Beyond -3 (Cycle II-Red '85) is a diptych of two canvases that join together to form a circle against, and more importantly beyond which, Vedova's typically energised black and white brushstrokes have been augmented with a rich red to form a strange and almost infinite sense of shifting material possibility. Simultaneously building and yet also defying a constructed sense of form and of volatile interpenetrative space, this work is one that makes full use of Vedova's aim in this series of extending the painterly logic of his work beyond the conventional limits of angles, contours and straight lines into a fuller, more open and non-heirarchical realm. Painterly explorations of the energy that flows through space and matter as well as through man and all other aspects of life the Oltre express an atmosphere of both confined energy and of the interconnectedness and interpenetrability of all aspects of life.
Vedova himself wrote of these works: 'the "Oltre"? entrapped disks? Disks that go beyond?... disperse, overflowing...That no man's land - grey, unlimited neutral - unexpectedly surfacing above as much reality - circle/square. Square/circle along the line of the separate, the ambiguous conflictuality, the precariousin the "oltre" the sense of the unattainable limit, of "leaning out" beyond' (Emilio Vedova 'Study/books on the "Dischi", "Tondi" and "Oltre", 1985, Emilio Vedova, exh. cat., Turin, 1999, pp. 130-131).
One of the Oltre, this work, Oltre- 3 (Ciclo II-Rosso '85) (Beyond -3 (Cycle II-Red '85) is a diptych of two canvases that join together to form a circle against, and more importantly beyond which, Vedova's typically energised black and white brushstrokes have been augmented with a rich red to form a strange and almost infinite sense of shifting material possibility. Simultaneously building and yet also defying a constructed sense of form and of volatile interpenetrative space, this work is one that makes full use of Vedova's aim in this series of extending the painterly logic of his work beyond the conventional limits of angles, contours and straight lines into a fuller, more open and non-heirarchical realm. Painterly explorations of the energy that flows through space and matter as well as through man and all other aspects of life the Oltre express an atmosphere of both confined energy and of the interconnectedness and interpenetrability of all aspects of life.
Vedova himself wrote of these works: 'the "Oltre"? entrapped disks? Disks that go beyond?... disperse, overflowing...That no man's land - grey, unlimited neutral - unexpectedly surfacing above as much reality - circle/square. Square/circle along the line of the separate, the ambiguous conflictuality, the precariousin the "oltre" the sense of the unattainable limit, of "leaning out" beyond' (Emilio Vedova 'Study/books on the "Dischi", "Tondi" and "Oltre", 1985, Emilio Vedova, exh. cat., Turin, 1999, pp. 130-131).