(born in Alcamo, Italy in 1929, lives and works in Milan)
Un ovale nero, 1984, signed, dated on the stretcher Simeti 1984, acrylic on shaped canvas, 80 x 80 cm, on stretcher, (PS)

Photo certificate:
Archivio Turi Simeti, supervised by Galleria Dep Art, Milan, archive no. 1984-N0801 with the signature of the artist.
This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné edited by Antonio Addamiano and Federico Sardella.

Provenance:
Zeitkunstgalerie, Kitzbühel
Private Collection, Germany

Since the mid-1960s, for Turi Simeti the oval has been the signature feature of his entire oeuvre. Simeti varies the theme of the ellipse in diverse ways, and thematises it in a variety of techniques. In order to represent the interrelationship between light, space and movement, he breaks away from traditional forms of composition in his innovative, serial systems of images, and develops his distinctive monochrome canvas relief which is typical of his work. The pictorial object ‘un ovale nero’ clearly illustrates Simeti’s intention to concentrate on an artistic element and, each time, on an individual colour, in order to be able to emphasise in particular the aspect of plasticity of his works. With his three-dimensional pictorial objects, Turi Simeti demonstrates that a tremendous impact and magnetism can be achieved by means of relatively few elements. According to the incidence of light and the perspective of the viewer, the monochrome canvas reliefs created by Simeti appear to glow from within themselves. Pictorial space here is not a term of illusion and deception, but rather an actual, existing fact. In order to help form the manifestation of the image, the viewer is required to become active before the object and to alter his/her position in front of the canvas. Simeti’s work thus illustrates even more explicitly that sensory perception always has to be understood as a dialogic relationship between subject and object.