(Venice 1919–2006)
Untitled, 1984, signed and dated on the reverse, acrylic and sand on canvas, 200 x 84 cm, framed

This work is registered at Archivio Emilio Vedova, Venice, under no. 572 and is accompanied by a photo certificate of authenticity signed by the artist.

Provenance:
Galleria Salvatore Ala, Milan (label on the reverse)
European Private Collection

All of Vedova’s painting can be traced back to a constantly changing dialogue between gesture and colour and their different functions. These are found within the discourse of struggle established by the artist between himself and the work. This relationship in conflict occurs in the name of artistic mastery, evident in each of his works. A mastery of composition, a sense of space and form and a relationship between colours.

In the autumn of 1980, when his work on the Plurimi/Binari of the Lacerazione ‚77/‘78 cycles was completed, Emilio Vedova was invited to Mexico City for an anthological exhibition of graphic art at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil and for a lecture series at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. This experience proved to be decisive for his stylistic development. He was inspired by the vitality of the places he visited and was particularly struck by the technique of mural painting. It was after this that he began to use colour on large canvases again.
The paintings made since the early 80s, named after the ancient Venetian tradition in which the teler was a large canvas applied to the wall and painted in oil, are large-format canvases, characterised by an irrepressible expressionist energy, strong and powerful gestures and a use of tonal and explosive colour.
In this large and imposing work, painted by Vedova in 1984, the influence of Mexican murals is evident not only in the choice of the large format and the free use of colour, but also in the deep viscerality evoked on the canvas: the strong textures highlight the spatial drama evoked by the complex gestural contrasts and the masterful use of colour, all of which defines the space.
“What you feel first of all [observing Vedova’s works] is a clash of signs, of forces and of elements. In Vedova’s works, something similar happens to what Marinetti said takes place in museums: ‘painters chase each other with brushstrokes’. It is not the painters who are chasing each other here, but the brushstrokes: ferocious assaults and tumefactions of black, blazing fires of red, white whip strokes and razor marks, hisses of blue which precede the collapse and the waterfall of yellows. The canvas is the place of a Tintorettoesque crucifixion, of an indecipherable ordeal of which we no longer identify the actors, but see only the consequences of the actions.”

E. Pontiggia, Emilio Vedova nelle collezioni bresciane, Edizioni Aab, Brescia 2003, p. 3.