28th Oct, 2018 8:30

Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art

 
  Lot 26
 
Lot 26 - Edoardo Villa (Italy 1915-2011)

26

Edoardo Villa (Italy 1915-2011)
Mediaeval Head (from the Steel Heads series)

painted steel

Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated
Exhibited: Engel, E.P. (ed.) (1980). Edoardo Villa Sculpture. Johannesburg: United Book Distributors, illustrated plates 20 and 21.


 

painted steel

Artwork date: 1966
Signature details: signed and dated
Exhibited: Engel, E.P. (ed.) (1980). Edoardo Villa Sculpture. Johannesburg: United Book Distributors, illustrated plates 20 and 21.

(1)

92 x 48 x 35 cm

Linda Givon collection, Johannesburg Private collection, Johannesburg.

Notes:

The emergence of Edoardo Villa’s seminal Mediaeval Head (1966) from his Steel Heads series onto the auction market brings a number of important aspects of South African art
history into sharp focus. The art historian responsible for pointing out the importance of this series of magnificent sculptures was Lola Watter, who remains all but forgotten by most people in the South African art world today. I was told of her importance by Prof. Karin Skawran, who was the founder of the UNISA Fine Arts department when it first opened in Pretoria in 1960/61. It was due to a thesis written by Watter that Villa’s work first came to the attention of Prof. Skawran, who subsequently, because of her exposure to the thesis, became an expert in Villa’s work. Lola Watter continued her research and study of Villa’s rich and dynamic ouevre and by the mid-sixties she was considered the leading expert on his work. As a result, she was approached to write definitive essays on Villa for, among others, Our Art Vol. 3.1 These excellent articles led to an invitation from Philip Stein to author the first dedicated Villa monograph, which Stein self-published in 1967, under the modest title Villa: Modern South African Sculptors.

Three of the ‘Steel Heads’ were photographed by Egon Guenther and are reproduced in the book. This is how Watter described these works at the time: ‘Three of the series of ‘Steel Heads’, forged in 1966, are shown on Plates 33 (a,b,c and d). Here Villa emphasised the architectonic quality of the sculpture by enclosing the sides with half-drums, like bisected helmets. ...The Heads stand on heavy discs or oblongs. The forms appear to mount on horizontal accents up the shafts of the necks, and to extend towards the solid interlinked forms of the features. A sense of looming presence emanates from them. These are not the heads of mediaeval or tribal warriors, they represent the proud heads of warriors of space, the intrepid astronauts.’ (Watter, 1967: 9-10)2 One of the three works referred to by Watter above, already belonged to gallerist Linda Goodman, and the other two were still in the collection of the artist at the time the book was published. Thirteen years later, a more comprehensive and larger monograph titled Edoardo Villa Sculpture,3 was published by Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit (RAU). This book represented the culmination of more than 15 years of research conducted by Amalie von Maltitz. It is in her pictorial survey, at the back of the book, that von Maltitz documents a fourth sculpture from the Steel Heads series titled Mediaeval Head (1965), which is the first time this sculpture Is documented (illustrationsadjacent).

Thus, the current work on auction is incorrectly dated by von Maltitz to have been made in 1965, when it was clearly made the following year. As it happens, this work is listed in Edoardo Villa Sculpture as being from the collection of Mr and Mrs R. Givon, Linda Goodman having by then married Reuven Givon. This proves that she had bought more than one of these seminal sculptures from the Steel Heads series early on. Linda, being the first owner of these two works is significant in my opinion, considering that in 1966 she opened Goodman Gallery in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, an event which singlehandly changed the trajectory of South African modern and contemporary art. Over half a century later, Goodman Gallery is still going strong. Not only has Goodman artist William Kentridge become an international superstar over the past decade, but the reputations of earlier stalwarts of the gallery, including Edoardo Villa, Sydney Kumalo, Ezrom Legae and Cecil Skotnes are now firmly secured, with record prices currently paid at auction for their works by a younger generation of collectors. This rich and dynamic legacy is symbolised by Villa’s Mediaeval Head (1966), which provides a rare opportunity for a discerning collector to embrace it.


Warren Siebrits

Sources:


1 Our Art 3. Pretoria: Foundation for Education, Science and Technology.
2 Watter, L. (1967). Villa: Modern South African Sculptors. Johannesburg: Philip Stein, pp.9-10.
3 Engel, E.P. (ed.) (1980). Edoardo Villa Sculpture. Johannesburg: Rand Afrikaanse Universiteit.

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Auction: Historic, Modern and Contemporary Art, 28th Oct, 2018

Aspire Art Auctions brought a significant double-header of top lot leads to this sale.

Stellar results were achieved for internationally prominent William Kentridge and Alexis Preller, one of South Africa’s most respected and collectable modern artists. Collectors were attracted to Kentridge’s remarkable, Drawing from Stereoscope (Double page, Soho in two rooms) (1999), which sold for R6 600 400, while Preller’s Adam (1972), sold for a world record at R9 104 000. Modern offerings also included works by Peter Clarke, Kenneth Bakker, and Douglas Portway, while the contemporary segment included Moshekwa Langa, Penny Siopis, Simon Stone, Clive van den Berg, and Georgina Gratrix, amongst others.

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