Strauss & co - 12 November 2018, Johannesburg

174 268 Edoardo Villa SOUTH AFRICAN 1915–2011 Thrust II signed and dated 1983 painted steel height: 250 cm including base; length: 440 cm R1 500 000 – 2 000 000 LITERATURE Karel Nel, Elizabeth Burroughs and Amalie von Maltitz (eds) (2005). Villa at 90, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball with Shelf Publishing, illustrated in colour on pages 88 and 89. In the mid-1980s, Edoardo Villa evolved the relationship between pipes and metal sheets into some of the most open, large-scale, space-related works he ever made. In this outstanding series of works titled, Thrust (also sometimes referred to as War Machines ) the human element of his earlier works, Prisoners and Cages is replaced by expansive compositions dominated by thick pipes that mimic the aggression of tanks, cannons and rocket launchers – the tools of war. These impressive but threatening works are intended to alert the viewer to the misplaced ingenuity in the making and use of sophisticated weapons of war.