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Lot Essay
The reliefs that Ettore Colla made in the 1950s are widely recognised as being among the finest works of his career. Heralding the artist's break with tradition, they also represent, in a typically Italian way, an acute awareness of tradition and an acceptance that the past always permeates the present and the future.
Colla's adoption of the relief as the sculptural format in which he would incorporate the use of the starkly modern and predominantly industrial material of iron deliberately establishes a paradox. The tradition of relief sculpture is particularly strong in Italy, dating back to Classical times and is conventionally seen through the famous 15th century competition to design the doors for the Florence Baptistry, as playing a central role in the genesis of the Renaissance. In his reliefs of the 1950s, Colla consciously chooses to pay homage to this tradition while at the same time to subvert it and announce a new departure. Using objets trouvés - found materials from the waste-grounds of modern industrial Italy - Colla reconstructs the classical relief format with the simplest of means and using the simplest of forms. Anticipating much of the conceptual art of the 1960s, Rilievo con ovali e bulloni (Relief with oval and rivets) is minimal in its construction being almost entirely what its title describes it to be. Yet, despite the boldness of its innovation, the radicalism of its simplicity and its incorporation of modern industrial materials, this starkly original relief sculpture is also made by Colla to look like an antique. A typical and deliberate feature of much of the artist's work, this fusing of the modern with the ancient endows the work with a timeless quality and renders the simplest of forms as a puzzling enigma.
Colla's adoption of the relief as the sculptural format in which he would incorporate the use of the starkly modern and predominantly industrial material of iron deliberately establishes a paradox. The tradition of relief sculpture is particularly strong in Italy, dating back to Classical times and is conventionally seen through the famous 15th century competition to design the doors for the Florence Baptistry, as playing a central role in the genesis of the Renaissance. In his reliefs of the 1950s, Colla consciously chooses to pay homage to this tradition while at the same time to subvert it and announce a new departure. Using objets trouvés - found materials from the waste-grounds of modern industrial Italy - Colla reconstructs the classical relief format with the simplest of means and using the simplest of forms. Anticipating much of the conceptual art of the 1960s, Rilievo con ovali e bulloni (Relief with oval and rivets) is minimal in its construction being almost entirely what its title describes it to be. Yet, despite the boldness of its innovation, the radicalism of its simplicity and its incorporation of modern industrial materials, this starkly original relief sculpture is also made by Colla to look like an antique. A typical and deliberate feature of much of the artist's work, this fusing of the modern with the ancient endows the work with a timeless quality and renders the simplest of forms as a puzzling enigma.