LONDON – The largest and most important single-owner private collection of Arte Povera ever seen in the UK is going on auction in London. The sale, under the title “Eyes Wide Open: An Italian Vision,” is going to take place on Feb. 11 at Christie’s. It includes more than 100 artworks by the great protagonists of Arte Povera, like Michelangelo Pistoletto, Alighero Boetti, Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone and Emilio Prini.
The collection explores the roots of the movement in the work of postwar artists Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni and Fausto Melotti, and its influence on art today, such as in the work of artists Cy Twombly, Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor, Tony Cragg, Rosemarie Trockel and Thomas Schütte.
A Milanese couple put together the collection 25 years ago. It reflects on one side a complete and formative analysis of Italian and international art starting from Arte Povera, and on the other side a deeply intimate and personal vision.
“The aim of the collection has been to pursue energy,” the collectors have declared. “Perhaps we have given preference to that which springs from the mind, but we have not neglected what flows from the heart. Italian postwar art and Arte Povera have constituted the core that has given the collection its identity: outstanding artists who have left their mark.”
The sale of the collection has been celebrated by the experts. “The best collection of Italian art I have ever seen come on the market. Never before have we seen a private collection that shows the ‘before and after’ of Arte Povera in such depth,” said Mariolina Bassetti, chairman of Christie’s Italy and International director of Postwar & Contemporary Art. And she has continued: “The first time I saw their collection, over 20 years ago, I was stunned by the impeccable quality of each work, from large masterpieces by some of Italy’s greatest artists to smaller, more intimate works by young artists. Each time I met the couple, I saw how the collection was the mirror of its collectors and I was deeply touched by the manner of their collecting and by the intimate harmony that existed between them. The collaborative nature of the couple’s collecting and partnership is reflected in the recurrence within the collection of many doubles and pairings, such as Michelangelo Pistoletto’s self-portrait with his companion Lei e Lui.”
Lei e Lui is one of the highlights of the sale and carries an estimate of £600,000-£800,000. It is a “mirror-painting” with a double-portrait of the artist and his lifelong companion and artistic collaborator Maria Pioppi facing each other. At the same time it reflects the relationship of the collectors and their common passion for art.
“In all the years that have gone by, we have loved it for what it is,” the collectors have declared, “a masterpiece you encounter every day, that offers you two permanent guests in your home, who have now become two silent friends, whose company you can always rely on. What is more, you can also think about ‘joining’ them yourself, entering in a material way into the work, which welcomes your image.”
Another highlight of the sale is the shaped canvas by Pino Pascali titled Torso di negra al bagno, with an estimate of £1.1-£1.5 million. It is a monumental figure of a woman in bikini (made out of the blankets of the sleeping cars of the Italian State Railways), a sort of anti-monument and alternative to the Venus rising from the waves, hovering between abstraction and figuration, between sculpture and painting. Speaking of this work, the collectors have described the emotion of desiring it and then owning it; the power of the sculpture to settle in their home as a queen, becoming the center of the house and radiating authority, beauty, and respect. “An icon of the internationality of Italian Art,” as they have defined it.
And then, Piede by Luciano Fabro, a striking sculpture with an impressive contrast between a giant bronze foot and a tall column of blue silk estimated £800,000-£1,200,000. It is part of a series realized between 1968 -71 and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1972. Fabro described these works as work capable of transforming its environment into the realm of a fairy tale. The collectors used to keep it in their library and considered it a work capable of dialoging with the books and created to stimulate dreams: “How many times have I thought of the Piede, comparing it to the ancient trees in the garden? How many times have I overcome this thought, going back to seeing it as a human being clinging to the earth, that is to say life, and at the same time yearning for the sky, its grandeur, the need to grow and to soar, in order to improve?”
There is also a famous igloo by Mario Merz (estimated £600,000-£800,000), an artist whom the collectors have thanked saying: “Thanks, Mario Merz, for having so magically given voice to poetry and pain, to joy and sorrow, to solitude and the existential search: silent presences in each of us.”
Among the postwar pieces there are important works by Alberto Burri (the top lot for estimate with a Combustione plastica for £1,7-£2,2 million) and Lucio Fontana, while among the contemporary works it stands out a head by Thomas Schütte (estimate £450,000-£650,000), which the collectors have so explained: “Schütte tells us everything about his characters with the head, nothing else is necessary: it is a sort of x-ray, a map of the opposing sentiments and contradictory emotions that can pass through the human soul.”
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