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拍品专文
'The surface of a canvas is a surface of two dimensions, and from that surface we make an optical phenomenon, we create an image that produces in the observer a sensation, an emotion, from all of which arises successively a problem, a reasoning, a thought, an idea, let us say in fact a mode of thought and of the spirit; if we do that, then we are in presence of art’ (P. Dorazio and G. Turcato, “Conversazione sull' arte oggi e su cose interessanti in occasione della trentatreesima Biennale di Venezia”, in Metro, Milan, no. 11, June 1966, p. 45.)
The delicately textured grid of coloured strings which make up Piero Dorazio’s densely layered composition Untitled (1958) appear as a tangled web of expressive brushstrokes, their free, curvilinear shapes interwoven in a complex pattern to create a rich tapestry of colour. There is a sense of spontaneity in the execution of each layer, the visceral, gestural play of the lines conveying a sense of the energy with which the artist has created the work. Saturated with a soft diffused light, the boundaries within this tactile grid are blurred, creating a pictorial surface that shimmers and shifts as the eye moves across it. In many ways, the structure of Untitled echoes the techniques and aesthetic approach of the Abstract Expressionists, many of whom Dorazio had met while living in New York during the early 1950s and whose compositions shaped the Italian artist’s first forays into abstraction.
For Dorazio, Mark Tobey was among the leading figures of the American avant-garde art scene, who he felt had taken a step beyond most of his contemporaries in researching and discovering a new expressive language beyond the European tradition. A letter dated 1954 signals his early interest in the Seattle-based artist’s work, claiming that Tobey had been ‘trying to solve two basic language problems for today's painting for 50 years; that of form and colour, understood as elements that construct space in a new way, and thus suggest a new way of perceiving it’ (Dorazio, ‘Brandi e i “Mostri Concettuali,” in Rigando Dritto: Piero Dorazio Scritti 1945 – 2004, ed. M. Mattioli, Milan, 2005, p. 157). Tobey’s signature technique, known as ‘white writing,’ made frequent use of linear forms, spatial layers and the shifting of focus across the canvas, all lessons which Dorazio absorbed and translated into his own artworks. Indeed, the manner in which Dorazio’s tangled network of lines in Untitled achieves a sense of harmony and luminosity amidst the apparent chaos of the surface of the image is very similar to Tobey’s distinctive, painterly style, although without the mystical connotations which underpinned his work. Discussing the appeal of Tobey’s work, Dorazio wrote: ‘…from the late 1930s until the beginning of the seventies, [Tobey] devoted his research to the sign; sign-colour, sign-emblem, or abstract ideogram, which becomes the structural element of vision and which multiplies in space, and defines it with its rhythmic, temporal nature. His paintings, immediately written with the colours, stimulates the eye by means of continuous and contiguous impulses, generating a lovely balance of tensions…’ (Dorazio, ‘Colore senza parole,’ in ibid, pp. 439-440).
The delicately textured grid of coloured strings which make up Piero Dorazio’s densely layered composition Untitled (1958) appear as a tangled web of expressive brushstrokes, their free, curvilinear shapes interwoven in a complex pattern to create a rich tapestry of colour. There is a sense of spontaneity in the execution of each layer, the visceral, gestural play of the lines conveying a sense of the energy with which the artist has created the work. Saturated with a soft diffused light, the boundaries within this tactile grid are blurred, creating a pictorial surface that shimmers and shifts as the eye moves across it. In many ways, the structure of Untitled echoes the techniques and aesthetic approach of the Abstract Expressionists, many of whom Dorazio had met while living in New York during the early 1950s and whose compositions shaped the Italian artist’s first forays into abstraction.
For Dorazio, Mark Tobey was among the leading figures of the American avant-garde art scene, who he felt had taken a step beyond most of his contemporaries in researching and discovering a new expressive language beyond the European tradition. A letter dated 1954 signals his early interest in the Seattle-based artist’s work, claiming that Tobey had been ‘trying to solve two basic language problems for today's painting for 50 years; that of form and colour, understood as elements that construct space in a new way, and thus suggest a new way of perceiving it’ (Dorazio, ‘Brandi e i “Mostri Concettuali,” in Rigando Dritto: Piero Dorazio Scritti 1945 – 2004, ed. M. Mattioli, Milan, 2005, p. 157). Tobey’s signature technique, known as ‘white writing,’ made frequent use of linear forms, spatial layers and the shifting of focus across the canvas, all lessons which Dorazio absorbed and translated into his own artworks. Indeed, the manner in which Dorazio’s tangled network of lines in Untitled achieves a sense of harmony and luminosity amidst the apparent chaos of the surface of the image is very similar to Tobey’s distinctive, painterly style, although without the mystical connotations which underpinned his work. Discussing the appeal of Tobey’s work, Dorazio wrote: ‘…from the late 1930s until the beginning of the seventies, [Tobey] devoted his research to the sign; sign-colour, sign-emblem, or abstract ideogram, which becomes the structural element of vision and which multiplies in space, and defines it with its rhythmic, temporal nature. His paintings, immediately written with the colours, stimulates the eye by means of continuous and contiguous impulses, generating a lovely balance of tensions…’ (Dorazio, ‘Colore senza parole,’ in ibid, pp. 439-440).