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Lot Essay
‘Pictorial experience is by its nature tied to the perception of space through the sensation of 'colour' (light) and 'form' (drawing and composition), which introduce in the observer the special characteristics as well as the formal and chromatic physiognomy of the image’.
Piero Dorazio
Painted in 1959, Piero Dorazio’s vibrant composition Monfort channels the dynamism and luminosity of Giacomo Balla’s Futurist canvases, using an abstract interplay of lines to explore the perceptual phenomena of light. For Dorazio, the genius of the Futurists remained the bench-mark for Italian artists working in the Post-War era, their revolutionary approach to art and modernity an aesthetic to be emulated. He had personally rediscovered the art of Balla in the years following the Second World War, thanks to a chance encounter with the artist on the streets of Rome: ‘It so happened that, one day in March of that year [1950], while out walking with the sculptor Edgardo Mannucci, as the first lukewarm sun caressed Rome, we noticed a little white-haired man seated on a small wall of the garden behind Castel Sant’Angelo,’ he later recalled. ‘Tugging on my jacket, Mannucci told me: “Look! See there, he’s Balla!” And so we approached to greet the Master painter... Thereafter, we went visiting him several times at his “Futurist Home”, located in Via Oslavia. With the help of his daughters, we looked for the paintings of his “heroic” years and we found there a lot of them, rolled up into packages and stored on a mezzanine in the kitchen. We opened them, and what a surprise! His forgotten Futurist masterpieces were there: “Compenetrazione iridescente”, “Mercurio passa davanti al sole”, “Velocità d’automobile più luce più rumori”, “Pessimismo-ottimismo”.’ (Dorazio, ‘Tre foglie d’oro per le figlie di Balla,’ in Rigando Dritto: Piero Dorazio Scritti 1945 – 2004, ed. M. Mattioli, Milan, 2005, p. 139).
The experience left an indelible impression on the young Italian, and he became a close friend to Balla and his family over the ensuing years, visiting the artist’s studio often, studying his paintings and sketchbooks first hand, and discussing the theories, techniques and history of the Futurist movement with the great master. In Monfort, Balla’s work appears as a strong influence in the shaping of Dorazio’s meditations on the nature of light, the abstract interplay of colour and line echoing the artist’s 1909 masterpiece Lampada – Studio di luce. Using red as a base pigment, the artist layers a seemingly infinite series of delicate, thin, subtly variegated lines over one another to create an intricate web of overlapping ribbons of pure colour. At points, the strands coalesce into dense points of concentrated pigment, while in other areas of the canvas the weave opens up, revealing the array of precisely placed layers of cross-hatching that Dorazio has used to construct the composition. The result is a kaleidoscopic, vibrating mass of lines, which appear to oscillate before the viewer, the bars of colour shifting and moving before the eye, lending an intense sense of depth and three-dimensionality to the composition. Modulating the density and thickness of the lines and gradually altering their orientation to one another, Dorazio plays with the sensations of vision, imbuing his composition not only with a sense of life and velocity, but also an intense chromatic richness and visual intrigue that draws the viewer in to its atmospheric depths.
Piero Dorazio
Painted in 1959, Piero Dorazio’s vibrant composition Monfort channels the dynamism and luminosity of Giacomo Balla’s Futurist canvases, using an abstract interplay of lines to explore the perceptual phenomena of light. For Dorazio, the genius of the Futurists remained the bench-mark for Italian artists working in the Post-War era, their revolutionary approach to art and modernity an aesthetic to be emulated. He had personally rediscovered the art of Balla in the years following the Second World War, thanks to a chance encounter with the artist on the streets of Rome: ‘It so happened that, one day in March of that year [1950], while out walking with the sculptor Edgardo Mannucci, as the first lukewarm sun caressed Rome, we noticed a little white-haired man seated on a small wall of the garden behind Castel Sant’Angelo,’ he later recalled. ‘Tugging on my jacket, Mannucci told me: “Look! See there, he’s Balla!” And so we approached to greet the Master painter... Thereafter, we went visiting him several times at his “Futurist Home”, located in Via Oslavia. With the help of his daughters, we looked for the paintings of his “heroic” years and we found there a lot of them, rolled up into packages and stored on a mezzanine in the kitchen. We opened them, and what a surprise! His forgotten Futurist masterpieces were there: “Compenetrazione iridescente”, “Mercurio passa davanti al sole”, “Velocità d’automobile più luce più rumori”, “Pessimismo-ottimismo”.’ (Dorazio, ‘Tre foglie d’oro per le figlie di Balla,’ in Rigando Dritto: Piero Dorazio Scritti 1945 – 2004, ed. M. Mattioli, Milan, 2005, p. 139).
The experience left an indelible impression on the young Italian, and he became a close friend to Balla and his family over the ensuing years, visiting the artist’s studio often, studying his paintings and sketchbooks first hand, and discussing the theories, techniques and history of the Futurist movement with the great master. In Monfort, Balla’s work appears as a strong influence in the shaping of Dorazio’s meditations on the nature of light, the abstract interplay of colour and line echoing the artist’s 1909 masterpiece Lampada – Studio di luce. Using red as a base pigment, the artist layers a seemingly infinite series of delicate, thin, subtly variegated lines over one another to create an intricate web of overlapping ribbons of pure colour. At points, the strands coalesce into dense points of concentrated pigment, while in other areas of the canvas the weave opens up, revealing the array of precisely placed layers of cross-hatching that Dorazio has used to construct the composition. The result is a kaleidoscopic, vibrating mass of lines, which appear to oscillate before the viewer, the bars of colour shifting and moving before the eye, lending an intense sense of depth and three-dimensionality to the composition. Modulating the density and thickness of the lines and gradually altering their orientation to one another, Dorazio plays with the sensations of vision, imbuing his composition not only with a sense of life and velocity, but also an intense chromatic richness and visual intrigue that draws the viewer in to its atmospheric depths.