Toti Scialoja (1914-1998)
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Toti Scialoja (1914-1998)

Due di Febbraio

Details
Toti Scialoja (1914-1998)
Due di Febbraio
signed and dated 'Scialoja '60, febbraio 1960' (on the reverse); signed and titled 'Toti Scialoja, Due di febbraio' (on the stretcher)
oil, sand and vinyl on canvas
59 1/8 x 79 1/8in. (150 x 201cm.)
Executed in February in 1960
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.
Exhibited
Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Toti Scialoja, June-September 2002 (illustrated in colour, p. 65)
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
Sale room notice
Please note that this work is registered in the Fondazione Toti Scialoja, Rome.

Lot Essay

The work is registered in the Fondazione Toti Scialoja, Rome.

The painting is one of the largest in scale that the artist produced in 1960. In 2002, the Scialoja Foundation presented a monumental solo exhibition for the artist at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. This followed a major retrospective held at GNAM in Rome following the artist's death in 1998.

The present lot is dated from a crucial period in the evolution of Toti Scialoja's artistic language. Executed in Rome in those few months between his return to Italy from New York (where he met his friends de Kooning, Motherwell, Scarpitta and Marca-Relli) and his subsequent three year stay in Paris were he moved to in 1961.

In New York, Scialoja began working on a series of larger scale works called Impronte emphasising their structure and composition within the pictorial space. The whites, blacks and greys often studded by red dots stand out from the large space of the canvas without any symbolic intent or sentimental aim. These deep tones might testify the anxiety in which Scialoja was caught in perceiving the last fatal loneliness of the creative act as well as some sort of human traces that identify themselves in the slow, rhythmical and inescapable pass of time.

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