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Lot Essay
An abstracted female head or teste, one of the cardinal motifs in Marisa Merz’s multifaceted practice, here emerges from an impasto swirl of gold paint. Two blue daubs and a swipe of red are all that defines the face within. Continuing the artist’s engagement with the human head, which she first began during the 1970s, the face in Untitled could be anyone or no one, an angel, an icon, a self-portrait, a myth; the lack of specificity underscores Merz’s career-long preoccupation with questions of subjectivity and interiority.
Born in Turin, Merz was the only female artist associated with Arte Povera, the late-1960s Italian sculptural movement which favoured humble, commonplace materials as a means of challenging the commercialisation of art. Indeed, in an effort to distance herself from the demands of the art market, Merz refused to date or name her works, arguing that artmaking should exist ‘beyond time’ (M. Merz quoted in O. Basciano, ‘Marisa Merz obituary’, The Guardian, 26 July 2019). While her male counterparts fashioned sculptures and installations from the detritus of Italy’s industrial age, Merz’s art instead drew from domestic and craft traditions, the small narratives so often maligned by the art world. Her work was enigmatic and enlightening; she was, wrote critic Peter Schjeldahl, ‘the most appealing artist in an otherwise all-male movement’ (P. Schjeldahl, ‘The Once Radical Slashes of Lucio Fontana’, The New Yorker, 28 January 2019). In 2013, around the time of the present work, Merz was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.
Born in Turin, Merz was the only female artist associated with Arte Povera, the late-1960s Italian sculptural movement which favoured humble, commonplace materials as a means of challenging the commercialisation of art. Indeed, in an effort to distance herself from the demands of the art market, Merz refused to date or name her works, arguing that artmaking should exist ‘beyond time’ (M. Merz quoted in O. Basciano, ‘Marisa Merz obituary’, The Guardian, 26 July 2019). While her male counterparts fashioned sculptures and installations from the detritus of Italy’s industrial age, Merz’s art instead drew from domestic and craft traditions, the small narratives so often maligned by the art world. Her work was enigmatic and enlightening; she was, wrote critic Peter Schjeldahl, ‘the most appealing artist in an otherwise all-male movement’ (P. Schjeldahl, ‘The Once Radical Slashes of Lucio Fontana’, The New Yorker, 28 January 2019). In 2013, around the time of the present work, Merz was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale.