(Rome 1900–1972)
Superficie 724, 1961–1972, titled and dated on the reverse Sup. N. 724 (1961–72) and titled on the stretcher, with two red stamps of a private collection, oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galleria Spazia Studio d’Arte, Bologna (label on the reverse)
Galleria L’Isola, Rome (label on the reverse, no. LD277)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1987

Exhibition:
Bologna, Personale, Galleria Spazia Studio d’Arte, 1985;
Rome, Tridente due. Artisti e movimenti in Italia. Libertà e invenzione del dopoguerra italiano: Burri, Capogrossi, Colla, Fontana, Galleria L’Isola, 1987;
Castelbasso, Nel segno della Materia, July/August 2007, exhib. cat., p. 113, ill.

Literature:
Guglielmo Capogrossi (ed.), Seconda parte del catalogo generale delle opere di Capogrossi 1967–1972, Naviglio, Milan, 1974, no. 43, ill. (with incorrect date: 1956–1972) – This work has now been registered at the Fondazione Capogrossi, with the right date

It is not rare for Capogrossi’s works to display two different dates. After leaving the Ecole de Rome, the artist gradually started research that lead him through Neo-Cubism to a personal form of abstract art characterised by his now famous form-sign that is repeated and varied multiple times. Over the course of Capogrossi’s approach to this new vision, some motifs underwent “mutations” and the composition itself was subsequently revisited and/or completed, sometimes even many years later, in light of new experiments, experiences and emotions that marked the life of the artist during that period.

Capogrossi presents a few individual formal features that may associate him with the Spatialists: the sign developing ad infinitum beyond the border of the painting, and the need to overcome traditional techniques by taking the sign to different, more luminous plastic dimensions indicate the artist’s definitive choice to distance himself from art perceived as vision, in favour of another type of art that is created by the effective dynamism of space. However, Capogrossi’s sign is not of Surrealist or automatic origin, rather it is an abstract sign: it is detached, refraining from all impulsive fluency, and does not express itself in a gesture-sign of impetuous vitality as in Fontana. It has its cultural origin in the Neo-plastic experience, and it goes beyond the dynamics of orthogonal straight lines, preferring diagonal lines and a movement that never ends in a centre or at borders. Capogrossi’s compositions are similar to ideograms: with a dissociated rhythmic structure in counterpoint and movements of precise arabesques on the surface. All his works may at first sight look similar, because their constituent parts – also derived from the examples of prehistoric or, at any rate, remote civilisations – are always the same; however, their rhythmic structure varies, and so do spaces and colours, with a refined colour spectrum characterised by a harmony of bright tones.
(GUIDO BALLO, 1964)