Borealis II

Christie’s is delighted to offer an important collection of works from a distinguished Italian collection with highlights by Enrico Castellani, Giuseppe Penone, and Pier Paolo Calzolari. Coming into prominence in the 1960s, these artists were part of a generation who sought to strip back art to its most basic principles in the aftermath of the Second World War. United by their use of dark monochrome tones, the artists’ colourless surfaces played a crucial role in the search for a new ground zero for painting and sculpture. By limiting their palettes in this way, they were able to emphasize the materiality of the canvas, allowing the previously unexplored elements of light and movement to redefine the picture plane. In Penone’s Pelle di grafite-riflesso di alurgite (2008) a vast black background is swathed in an intricate pattern of luminous convoluted lineation that reflects the light in an ephemeral array of patterns. The charcoal hue of Castellani’s Superfici Grafite (2007) provides the foundation for the artist’s three-dimensional explorations, while the mixed media assembled in Calzolari’s Untitled (1989) emphasize the purity of his natural elements, rendered in subdued tones of black and white. Along with their contemporaries – most notably Lucio Fontana and Piero Manzoni – these artists reinvigorated the Italian art scene during the Post-War period, paving the way for the international development of Minimalist and Conceptual art.