¤ ALBERTO MAGNELLI (1888-1971) ARDOISE, 1940 Gouache... Lot 8

¤ ALBERTO MAGNELLI (1888-1971) ARDOISE, 1940 Gouache on slate Signed and dated '[19]40' top right Signed and dedicated 'À mes chers/Suzanne et George [sic]/Avec mon amitié/Souvenir' on the back of the frame Gouache on slate; signed and dated upper right; signed again and dedicated on the back of the frame 25,8 X 17,8 CM - 10 1/8 X 7 IN. PROVENANCE Collection Georges and Suzanne Ramié, Vallauris. Then by descent. "Between drawing, the freer practice of collage and the definitive realization of his canvases, Slates have the value of a private lesson in a period of structural evolution for the painter and in a time of collective upheaval. It is noticeable that the period also produced similar works, other suites and sets which are also, with various options and modes of expression, concentrates of plastic emotion with the value of a spiritual testament when everything in the world can collapse. ...] But for Magnelli, this medium had other virtues than Franciscan. The school slate provided the painter with an absolute abstraction of the painting, background, material, colour and frame combined. He liked its handling, its mineral density, its matte finish, its grain, the monochrome black or dark red squares of its surface. All these elements were part of the elaboration process and should always be preserved in one way or another in the final composition. The raw wood of the frame, the design of its veins, the rounded angle corresponded to the taste for natural materials so frequent in this current of concrete art in which it was situated. ...] The painter used to store these slates on shelves, like the precious incunabula of an invented language. All the art of his maturity, imposing, spiritual and serious, elliptical and peremptory, finds here its primary formulation. The prehistory of a world in the process of blossoming, like those shale palettes of the fourth millennium which are at the origin of the classical Egyptian bas-relief, but also a constant confrontation, a reference point where the plastic capacity of his intuitions can be verified and then conferred with another dimension, to take new paths". Germain Viatte, "Talismans du voyage", in Magnelli, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, Paris : 1989, pp. 147-151.