Strauss & co - 10 November 2014, Johannesburg

124 167 Edoardo Daniele VILLA south african 1915–2011 Seated Figure signed and dated 1987 painted steel height: 80 cm, excluding base R80 000–120 000 notes This work was used on the poster and invitation for the National Grahamstown Art Festival, 1987 This painted steel figure was made three decades after Edoardo Villa was released from Zonderwater, an internment camp outside Cullinan, east of Pretoria. Villa, an Italian national who completed his studies at the Scuola D’Arte Andrea Fontoni in his native Bergamo, was conscripted to fight in World War Two and captured in North Africa. Upon his release from prison Villa opted to stay in South Africa and work as an artist. His early years were marked by poverty, struggle and doubt. By 1988, when he was the guest artist at the Standard Bank Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown, Villa was widely recognised and a much-admired artist. This unusually humorous figure work, conjured from a skilful combination of primary volumes, received star billing in Grahamstown. The formal geometry and patinated surface is consistent with the artist’s sculptural output from this period. Its figurative qualities also animate a key aspect of Villa’s thinking. ‘If anything could sum up my fundamental concern in art, it is that of the human and the individual – the human condition,’the artist told Allan Crump. 1 Villa’s attitude to colour was less defined and fluctuated over the years. He first began applying colour to his sculptures in the early 1960s, notably to create an ‘even surface’and dramatise the ‘play of lightness against strength’, and subsequently went through periods of rejecting it because of the way colour ‘lessened the essential, monumental character of his work’. 2 This work, produced during a period of great public acclaim – including a two-man show with fellow Amadlozi Group stalwart Cecil Skotnes at the Pretoria Art Museum in 1989 – captures the master in a lighter, more ebullient mood. 1. Crump, Allan (1987) Sculpture by Edoardo Villa, 1985 to 1987: Johannesburg Art Gallery, June 9 to July 12, 1987 , Johannesburg, Johannesburg Art Gallery. Page 8. 2. Watter, Lola (1978) ‘Edoardo Villa’, Our Art III , Pretoria: Lantern. Page 64.