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Lot Essay
Ciclo'62 S 4 is one of an important series of paintings known as 'Cycles' that Vedova painted in Venice in 1962. In these paintings the collation of forms, symbols and cypher-like signs fused together into a dense, complex and Futurist-inspired unity that distinguished the artist's earlier work of the 1950s has disappeared almost completely. In the 'Cycles', the energy and direction of the brushstroke alone is redirected into a series of non-formal or perhaps, in-formal marks of pure painterly energy that determine the ultimate form of the painting.
The intricate and complex structuring of Vedova's work remains however. Using brilliant colour as well as the more characteristic two-tone black and white, these paintings describe a vibrant vortex of energy. Exuding a strange pictorial logic, angular shapes and rough forms are held together into a compressed unity that seems to speak of urban experience - an aspect that is reinforced in some paintings from the series, openly revealing the printed newspaper ground on which they have been made.
Vedova's decision to paint on newspaper not only reveals his desire to show how the energy and dynamism of his painting was intricately involved with trials and tribulations of everyday daily life, but also introduces an element of this reality into the logic of the painting. In a move that to some degree emulates Willem de Kooning's practice of painting a unity of fragments using a layering of paper, Vedova was probably looking more towards the work of the Berlin Dadaists and the Merz collages of Kurt Schwitters, when he painted these paintings. These artists' integration of elements of daily life into their work often served a socio-political purpose. In Vedova's case the integration of such materials is not only reflective of the fiercely political and ongoing figurative-realism versus abstract debate then taking place in Italy but more significantly it is also a demonstration of artistic freedom and intent. It is a material assertion of the artist's insistence that the energy, force and ultimate form of his so-called abstract paintings was both an articulation and a response to the elements of the so-called real world. The painterly actions of the artist are, as a work like Ciclo'62 S 4 attests, determined by the socio-political situation he finds himself in at the moment of creation. As Vedova declared in a lecture on his work given in 1962, if nothing else, his work is 'a cry for freedom at all costs'.
The intricate and complex structuring of Vedova's work remains however. Using brilliant colour as well as the more characteristic two-tone black and white, these paintings describe a vibrant vortex of energy. Exuding a strange pictorial logic, angular shapes and rough forms are held together into a compressed unity that seems to speak of urban experience - an aspect that is reinforced in some paintings from the series, openly revealing the printed newspaper ground on which they have been made.
Vedova's decision to paint on newspaper not only reveals his desire to show how the energy and dynamism of his painting was intricately involved with trials and tribulations of everyday daily life, but also introduces an element of this reality into the logic of the painting. In a move that to some degree emulates Willem de Kooning's practice of painting a unity of fragments using a layering of paper, Vedova was probably looking more towards the work of the Berlin Dadaists and the Merz collages of Kurt Schwitters, when he painted these paintings. These artists' integration of elements of daily life into their work often served a socio-political purpose. In Vedova's case the integration of such materials is not only reflective of the fiercely political and ongoing figurative-realism versus abstract debate then taking place in Italy but more significantly it is also a demonstration of artistic freedom and intent. It is a material assertion of the artist's insistence that the energy, force and ultimate form of his so-called abstract paintings was both an articulation and a response to the elements of the so-called real world. The painterly actions of the artist are, as a work like Ciclo'62 S 4 attests, determined by the socio-political situation he finds himself in at the moment of creation. As Vedova declared in a lecture on his work given in 1962, if nothing else, his work is 'a cry for freedom at all costs'.