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Lot Essay
‘Nature itself unites with geometry in the mysterious catharsis of the order of the phases, and rejects modelling for the module, it becomes a crystal which enchants it.’ – Fausto Melotti
‘Slowly music has ensnared me, disciplining me with its laws, distractions and digressions in a balanced discourse…’ – Fausto Melotti
In the late 1950s, Fausto Melotti’s sculpture underwent a dramatic evolution, shrugging off the enclosed spaces of the teatrini that had dominated his œuvre in the wake of the Second World War, and instead embracing a new sense of lightness and dynamism with a series of beautifully ordered, precise yet lyrical metal sculptures built from thin sheets and delicate threads of brass, gold and steel. Exploring the various rhythms and harmonies possible within a carefully cadenced sequence of geometric forms, Melotti used these works to examine the expressive potential of a minimal, pure visual language that connected back to his pre-war experiments in abstraction. Encapsulating this renewed focus on space, geometry and the line in Melotti’s artistic practice, Tema e variazioni V radiates an elegant, almost mathematical, precision, whilst simultaneously revealing the enduring influence that music and its structures had on the artist’s creative process.
Created in 1972, the sculpture features a series of delicate gold geometric elements – a mixture of rectangles, ellipses, curving parabolas, thin circles and independent lines –arranged in a variety of vertical configurations along a horizontal plane. Positioned atop thin, spindly rods, these elements appear held together by almost imperceptible connections, linked by the thinnest of threads, lending the composition a certain fragility and lightness of form. Indeed, in Tema e variazioni the empty space that surrounds each of these elements appears as important as the metallic forms themselves, each gap and break in the sequence imbued with an invisible tension. Throughout his career, Melotti had been fascinated by the visual oppositions of movement and stasis, rigidity and flexibility, solidity and weightlessness, as a means of challenging traditional conceptions of the sculptural medium. The artist saw metals such as gold, brass and steel as dynamic materials, capable of being transformed from heavy, cold metals into a malleable fabric, or pared back into impossibly thin rings and strips while still retaining the essential tensile strength of the material. By eschewing the traditional volumetric language of sculpture in this way, opening his structure out to include the play of light and negative space in its composition, Melotti imbued his works with a diaphanous quality that causes the dynamics of the various internal elements to shift and alter as the eye moves around, and through, the work.
At the same time, the arrangement of the forms appears to echo the visual structure of a musical score, the individual vertical components appearing like a series of notes delineating a mysterious melody. A keen pianist, Melotti had always been captivated by the internal rules and complex structures of musical compositions, and sought to translate a sense of this intricate language into his art. Chief amongst his musical inspirations was the concept of the counterpoint, a complex melodious structure most commonly present in classical music, and a primary concept underpinning the structure of Tema e variazioni V. The creation of harmonies presents a particular challenge in contrapuntal music as it involves multiple voices, or parts, following independent melodies while remaining interdependent at the same time. Melotti is faced with a similar challenge in the present work, as he strives to create a coherent sculpture from the complex sequence of motifs and symbols that populate its length, ensuring they correspond to one another while also retaining their individual identities. Delicately balancing each of these elements, Tema e variazioni V appears as a chorus of geometric voices, turned into a symphony of lines that shimmer across space, a sculpture that is at once dynamic and still, absorbing and contemplative.
‘Slowly music has ensnared me, disciplining me with its laws, distractions and digressions in a balanced discourse…’ – Fausto Melotti
In the late 1950s, Fausto Melotti’s sculpture underwent a dramatic evolution, shrugging off the enclosed spaces of the teatrini that had dominated his œuvre in the wake of the Second World War, and instead embracing a new sense of lightness and dynamism with a series of beautifully ordered, precise yet lyrical metal sculptures built from thin sheets and delicate threads of brass, gold and steel. Exploring the various rhythms and harmonies possible within a carefully cadenced sequence of geometric forms, Melotti used these works to examine the expressive potential of a minimal, pure visual language that connected back to his pre-war experiments in abstraction. Encapsulating this renewed focus on space, geometry and the line in Melotti’s artistic practice, Tema e variazioni V radiates an elegant, almost mathematical, precision, whilst simultaneously revealing the enduring influence that music and its structures had on the artist’s creative process.
Created in 1972, the sculpture features a series of delicate gold geometric elements – a mixture of rectangles, ellipses, curving parabolas, thin circles and independent lines –arranged in a variety of vertical configurations along a horizontal plane. Positioned atop thin, spindly rods, these elements appear held together by almost imperceptible connections, linked by the thinnest of threads, lending the composition a certain fragility and lightness of form. Indeed, in Tema e variazioni the empty space that surrounds each of these elements appears as important as the metallic forms themselves, each gap and break in the sequence imbued with an invisible tension. Throughout his career, Melotti had been fascinated by the visual oppositions of movement and stasis, rigidity and flexibility, solidity and weightlessness, as a means of challenging traditional conceptions of the sculptural medium. The artist saw metals such as gold, brass and steel as dynamic materials, capable of being transformed from heavy, cold metals into a malleable fabric, or pared back into impossibly thin rings and strips while still retaining the essential tensile strength of the material. By eschewing the traditional volumetric language of sculpture in this way, opening his structure out to include the play of light and negative space in its composition, Melotti imbued his works with a diaphanous quality that causes the dynamics of the various internal elements to shift and alter as the eye moves around, and through, the work.
At the same time, the arrangement of the forms appears to echo the visual structure of a musical score, the individual vertical components appearing like a series of notes delineating a mysterious melody. A keen pianist, Melotti had always been captivated by the internal rules and complex structures of musical compositions, and sought to translate a sense of this intricate language into his art. Chief amongst his musical inspirations was the concept of the counterpoint, a complex melodious structure most commonly present in classical music, and a primary concept underpinning the structure of Tema e variazioni V. The creation of harmonies presents a particular challenge in contrapuntal music as it involves multiple voices, or parts, following independent melodies while remaining interdependent at the same time. Melotti is faced with a similar challenge in the present work, as he strives to create a coherent sculpture from the complex sequence of motifs and symbols that populate its length, ensuring they correspond to one another while also retaining their individual identities. Delicately balancing each of these elements, Tema e variazioni V appears as a chorus of geometric voices, turned into a symphony of lines that shimmer across space, a sculpture that is at once dynamic and still, absorbing and contemplative.