ARTIST FOCUS:
Edoardo Villa
10/03/2026 Live Auctions
LEFT: Lot 15, Rising Forms
RIGHT: Lot 16, Vince, 1993
One hundred and eleven years after his birth, Edoardo Villa remains as compelling and relevant as he was at the height of his prolific output in the 1980s and 1990s. When he died in 2011 at the age of 95, he was hailed by the Sunday Times as South Africa’s “most prolific and famous sculptor”, an assessment grounded in a body of work numbering over 1,000 sculptures. Ranging from solid, volumetric bronzes to constructed steel compositions of striking force, Villa’s work played a decisive role in modernising the language of sculpture in South Africa. This sale celebrates that enduring relevance, bringing together an important group of works that reflect both the scale of his ambition and the breadth of his vision.
LEFT: Lot 20, Intertwined forms, 1985
RIGHT: Lot 21, Abstract, 1985
Born in 1915 near Bergamo in northern Italy and trained at the Scuola D’Arte Andrea Fantoni, Villa’s life was irrevocably altered by war. Captured in North Africa and interned at Zonderwater near Pretoria, he chose to remain in South Africa after his release in 1947. That same year he held his first exhibition in Johannesburg. From modest and often precarious beginnings, he forged a practice that would come to straddle a pivotal moment in local art history, emerging after the conservative naturalism of Anton van Wouw and directly influencing a new generation, including Sydney Kumalo and Ezrom Legae, both of whom he mentored. As a founding member of the Amadlozi Group, alongside Kumalo, Giuseppe Cattaneo, Cecily Sash and Cecil Skotnes, Villa positioned himself at the forefront of a progressive, syncretic modernism.
At the centre of this sale is a commanding steel sculpture from the Thrust series, also known as War Machines, developed in the mid-1980s. Here, the upright “Prisoners” of an earlier series tilt into diagonal, forceful compositions dominated by industrial pipes and planar steel sheets. The residual human presence of earlier works gives way to structures that evoke tanks, cannons and rocket launchers. Villa’s intention was not illustrative but cautionary: these works alert the viewer to the disturbing sophistication of modern weaponry and the misplaced investment in its creation.
Lot 17, Thrust II detail shots, 1984/6
In War Machine, flat steel sheets are transfixed and simultaneously suspended by pairs of straight pipes, creating a striking visual equivalent of expansion and detonation. The sculpture reads as both propulsion and aftermath; a structure caught mid-explosion, or the debris left in its wake. The composition holds in a tense equilibrium, characteristically resisting a single fixed orientation; front, back, up and down dissolve, the work resting convincingly on multiple axes. Works of this magnitude seldom appear at auction. They are more often encountered in the public realm, where Villa’s sculptures have long defined civic and institutional landscapes, from the grounds of the University of Pretoria to major corporate and museum collections. To encounter such a substantial example on the market is rare and underscores the significance of this collection.
While this formidable steel work commands attention, the broader selection in this sale offers a compelling reminder of Villa’s versatility. Alongside it, a group of more intimate bronzes reveals a different cadence: tactile, contemplative, and quietly powerful. Here, the same structural intelligence is distilled into smaller forms. Cylindrical volumes, attenuated limbs and abstracted torsos suggest a subtle figurative presence, demonstrating how Villa continually negotiated the boundary between abstraction and the human form. Like many artists, he returned repeatedly to the abstracted figure, though his interpretation was distinctly his own: shaped by European training, African context and a deeply held humanism. “If anything could sum up my fundamental concern in art,” he remarked in 1988, “it is that of the human and the individual – the human condition.”
LEFT: Lot 18, Untitled (Nude Figure II), 1980
RIGHT: Lot 19, Figure, 1977
O’Toole, S. (2016). Edoardo Villa, Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust [O]. Available:
https://edoardovilla.co.za/artist/edoardo-villa
Nel, K. (2005). 'Villa at 90', C ape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers, illustrated on p. 88.
O’Toole, S. (2016). Edoardo Villa, Claire and Edoardo Villa Will Trust [O]. Available:
https://edoardovilla.co.za/artist/edoardo-villa
Auction
18 March 2026 at 7pm
Viewing:
10 - 18 March 2026
Monday – Friday: 8:30 am – 4:30pm
Saturday: 9 am – 3 pm
SALE ENQUIRIES
Cape Town: ct@aspireart.net | +27 21 418 0765
SPECIALISTS
Sarah Sinisi
sarah@aspireart.net
Amy Carrington
amy@aspireart.net