Estimate: $40,000 - $60,000
Auction: November 17, 2020 12:00:00 PM EDT
Stamp-signed and dated 61 bottom right, sand-casted and welded bronze with golden brown patina on wood base.
height: 28 7/8 in. (73.3cm)
width: 26 13/16 in. (68cm)
depth: 1 1/4 in. (3.2cm)
base: 2 7/8 x 18 1/8 x 8 in. (7.3 x 46 x 20.4cm)
Provenance: The Estate of Dorothy Levitt Beskind, New York, New York.
NOTE:
This lot is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by Gabriella Di Milia, Archivio Consagra.
Fourteen years prior to the creation of Sogno di Eremita, while still in his twenties, Pietro Consagra, along with seven other young Italian artists, founded a collective known as Forma 1.In 1947, the group held their first exhibition at the Art Club gallery in Rome, though it was Consagra who was singled out as "the only one of his colleagues to achieve a self-sufficient form of entirely abstract expressionism." [1]
As in the present work, Consagra sought out a frontal orientation of his sculptures. He created flattened, almost two-dimensional sculptures, both sharply geometric and organically curvilinear that challenge traditional notions of the volume of sculpture. The overlapping, juxtaposed planes and gaps address the viewer and free sculpture from its three-dimensional character.
Over the course of his career, Consagra's works were featured in eleven Venice Biennales, as well as in the Biennial in São Paolo and solo exhibitions at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, the World House, New York, and Documenta II, Kassel. His works are in the collections of museums around the world, including the National Gallery, Washington, DC, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano.
[1] Enrico Prampolini, in the Art Club's bulletin, December 1947/ January 1948, quoted in https://pietroconsagra.org/en/biography/