PIETRO CONSAGRA

(1920-2005)

Scultura in legno, 1948

Footnotes

This work is registered in the Archivio Pietro Consagra, Milan, and is accompanied by a photo-certificate of authenticity.

Provenance
Private Collection, Rome (acquired directly from the artist circa 1960)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited
Rome, Galleria del Secolo, Consagra, Corpora, Turcato, 1949, no. 3

Literature
Pallavicini, 'Lo scultore delle "forme libere": Soggetti non oggetti' in: Bellezza, n. 28, a. IV, Milan 2 March 1948, pp. 39-42 illustrated in black and white
Italo Pellicano, 'Tre credenti dell'Astrattismo' in: La Tribuna Illustrata, n. 9, a. LVII, Rome 27 February 1949, p. 15, illustrated in black and white
Léon Degand, 'L'art d'avant-garde en Italie' in: Art d'Aujourd'hui, n. 2, Paris January 1952, p. 33, illustrated in black and white
Elisabetta Cristallini, Dialoghi tra arte e architettura negli anni della ricostruzione 1945-1955, Rome 2017, p. 137, illustrated in black and white (studio view)


Pietro Consagra was one of the foremost visionaries of the Italian post-war period. Recognised as one of the most influential sculptors who, alongside Carla Accardi, Piero Dorazio, Achille Perilli, Giulio Turcato, amongst others, formed the avant-gardist group Forma, his work has been exhibited internationally and resides in global museum collections including the Tate, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Sao Paulo, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Presented here is an exceptional and majestic painted sculpture in wood by the Italian virtuoso. Executed in 1948, it is one of the most rare, early examples of his vertical compositions that made him a pioneer of the sculpted form. Surrounded by the greats of his time – travelling to Paris in 1946 to tour the studios of Brâncuşi, Giacometti, Laurens and Hartung – Consagra's practice has been significantly undervalued for its profound impact on post-war art. The Forma group championed a purist conception of shape and colour, pitching themselves against the metaphysical romanticism of Cubism. From post-war Europe sprung these essentialist notions of painting and sculpture – pre-dating the hard formalism emerging in New York by some years – and at the forefront stood Consagra.

In the present work, Scultura in legno, Consagra's signature angularity and sense of material is writ large. Embodying a post-Futurist, pre-Minimalist notion of sculpture, it is easy to view such a work as the missing link between Umberto Boccioni and Sol Lewitt. Subtly pigmented in discrete passages, it is a beautiful work that speaks to the organic nature of its materials and the pioneering plastic ideas it stands for.