Sale: 361 / Post War/ Contemporary Art, Dec. 12. 2009 in Munich Lot 344

 
Antonio Calderara - Spazio, colore, luce (6-teilig)


344
Antonio Calderara
Spazio, colore, luce (6-teilig), 1971.
Oil on panel
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 30,500 / $ 32,940

(incl. surcharge)

Oil on panel, mounted in object box side by side
Monogrammed and dated "12. 71. 73" on verso of one of the plates. Each 54 x 27 cm (21,2 x 10,6 in)

PROVENANCE: Malborough Galleria d'Arte, Rome (with label on verso).
Galleria la Polana, Genoa (with stamp on verso).
Private collection South Germany.

EXHIBITION: Antonio Calderara. Werke von 1928-1978. Eine Gedächtnisausstellung zum 85. Geburtstag, Galerie Regio, Freiburg i. Brsg., 17 June - 21 August 1988 (with label on verso).

After his first one-man exhibition in 1923, Antonio Calderara broke off his studies in engineering, which he had begun two years earlier at the Milan Polytechnicon, in 1925 in favor of his career as an artist . As an autodidact, Calderara was a painter who experimented a great deal between the 1930s and late 1950s, attempting various different styles in a relatively short period of time. His oeuvre includes still lifes related to Morandi's quiet meditative style, as well as landscapes and figurative scenes in an Impressionist style and portraits in the manner of New Objectivity, the latter occupied the main part of his artistic creation. Searching for his definitely own artistic expression, the misty landscape of Lake Orta - where he lived for several decades and by which he was fascinated - became his favorite subject. Gradually, in reaching a higher degree of abstraction in his Lake Orta landscapes, Calderara finally abandoned landscapes and architecture and discovered a completely abstract world in which reality is apparent only as memory. According to his own sensation, he painted his first purely abstract work in 1959. From this period onwards he developed an abstract style in pastel colors, which is reminiscent of works by Albers. Based on the principle of the Golden Section, numbers and proportions were of great importance to Calderara. The artist called his geometric approach the "spazio mentale" (mental space ).

Calderara‘s paintings obtain their unique poetry by means of a simplicity in form and color. In the 1960s and 70s, when the USA and Europe began to become media societies with an abundance of image, Calderara created meditative color spaces of a high esthesia and calmness. In his occupation with colors and their nature, Calderara soon explores the limits of perception, he creates picture worlds in a highly sensitive coloring, with a barely distinguishable obfuscation and elucidation. Human perception is also made the painter’s object of research in this work. He arranged 6 color plates in a mellow coloring in a row. Format and motif remain constant, just the coloring of the outer and inner color fields and the colored edges vary. Any gestural impulse is avoided, the line is entirely subordinate to the surface. By scaling the three color fields, Calderara creates a rudimentary spatial illusion on every plate. The observer’s look into the apparent depth finds its aiming- and quiet point in the tiny black square. In this large-sized work Calderara combines 6 of his color spaces to a mellow color composition of an outmost harmony.

Calderara lived in Milan and Vaciago on Lake Orta until his death in 1978. [JS].




344
Antonio Calderara
Spazio, colore, luce (6-teilig), 1971.
Oil on panel
Estimate:
€ 30,000 / $ 32,400
Sold:
€ 30,500 / $ 32,940

(incl. surcharge)