.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Along with Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani and Agostino Bonalumi, Eduarda (Dada) Maino, who took the name Dadamaino after her name was mistakenly printed as a single word in an exhibition catalogue, was one of the pioneering Italian artists of Azimuth. Founded in Milan by Manzoni and Castellani in 1959, the year from which this work also derives, Azimuth was the cultural vortex around which much of the radical new conception of painting that took place in Italy at the end of the 1950s radiated.
Volume of 1959, is a classic example the landmark series of perforated paintings known as the Volume (Volumes) that Dadamaino began in 1958 and continued throughout her association with Azimuth until 1960. Marking an extension of Lucio Fontana's spatialist conception of art into a new direction that coincided with the conceptual developments of Manzoni and Castellani's 'Achromes' and 'Surfaces', Dadamaino's 'Volumes' were conceptual translations of the canvas plane into a self-demonstrating spatial volume. As can be seen in this work with its two primordial-looking oval forms cut out using scissors from the monochrome-painted canvas surface, Dadamaino's primary concern with these works was to reveal a volume by means of its opposite, immaterial, empty space. 'I've always abhorred matter and looked for the immaterial' Dadamaino has said. (Dadamaino, quoted in Dadamaino, Volumes 1958-1960 exh. cat. Mayor Gallery, London, 2011, p. 11) As in Fontana's Concetti spaziali, what is important in the Volume is not the canvas but the dynamic space generated by her interaction with canvas plane.
This dynamism is extended in this work by the fluid relationship established between the two empty forms and the space opening on to the blank wall behind. In this way Dadamaino has opened up the canvas into a new conceptual exploration of its own spatial and material nature, bridging and extending the new pictorial dimensions forged at the same time by Fontana and Manzoni. As Manzoni wrote of Dadamaino's pioneering work from this period: 'To suggest, to express, to represent, to abstract: these are the inexistent problems of today. Forms, colours, dimensions have no meaning: the only problem that exists for the artist is the conquest of a most integral freedom. Boundaries are the challenge. Just as the scientist faces the boundaries of physics so the artist faces only mental limitations. Dada Maino has overcome the 'pictorial problem': her works are informed by other criteria: her paintings are the flags of a new world, they are new meaning: They do not 'say things differently', they say new things. (Piero Manzoni, 'Invitation for the exhibition Dada Maino, Gruppo N, Padua, May 1961. (trans. F. Luino), quoted in Azimuth exh. cat. Gagosian gallery, London, p. 45)
Volume of 1959, is a classic example the landmark series of perforated paintings known as the Volume (Volumes) that Dadamaino began in 1958 and continued throughout her association with Azimuth until 1960. Marking an extension of Lucio Fontana's spatialist conception of art into a new direction that coincided with the conceptual developments of Manzoni and Castellani's 'Achromes' and 'Surfaces', Dadamaino's 'Volumes' were conceptual translations of the canvas plane into a self-demonstrating spatial volume. As can be seen in this work with its two primordial-looking oval forms cut out using scissors from the monochrome-painted canvas surface, Dadamaino's primary concern with these works was to reveal a volume by means of its opposite, immaterial, empty space. 'I've always abhorred matter and looked for the immaterial' Dadamaino has said. (Dadamaino, quoted in Dadamaino, Volumes 1958-1960 exh. cat. Mayor Gallery, London, 2011, p. 11) As in Fontana's Concetti spaziali, what is important in the Volume is not the canvas but the dynamic space generated by her interaction with canvas plane.
This dynamism is extended in this work by the fluid relationship established between the two empty forms and the space opening on to the blank wall behind. In this way Dadamaino has opened up the canvas into a new conceptual exploration of its own spatial and material nature, bridging and extending the new pictorial dimensions forged at the same time by Fontana and Manzoni. As Manzoni wrote of Dadamaino's pioneering work from this period: 'To suggest, to express, to represent, to abstract: these are the inexistent problems of today. Forms, colours, dimensions have no meaning: the only problem that exists for the artist is the conquest of a most integral freedom. Boundaries are the challenge. Just as the scientist faces the boundaries of physics so the artist faces only mental limitations. Dada Maino has overcome the 'pictorial problem': her works are informed by other criteria: her paintings are the flags of a new world, they are new meaning: They do not 'say things differently', they say new things. (Piero Manzoni, 'Invitation for the exhibition Dada Maino, Gruppo N, Padua, May 1961. (trans. F. Luino), quoted in Azimuth exh. cat. Gagosian gallery, London, p. 45)