Piero Dorazio
Italian, 1927–2005
Eye and Cross 5th, 2003
Oil on canvas
23.62 x 15.75 in. (60 x 40 cm.)
Frame: 30.71 x 21.65 x 1.97 in. (78 x 55 x 5 cm.)
Signed, titled, dated 2003 and stamped by Studio Piero Dorazio on the reverse. Accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity signed by the Piero Dorazio Archive.
Lot ID141715
Estimate
15,000—20,000 USD
Piero Dorazio was an Italian painter who was pivotal in bringing abstraction to Italy, with oil paintings and works on paper often composed of intensely colored bands, stretched and intermingled like webs across surfaces. The artist's unique style of geometric abstraction and affinity for bold color is evidenced by the above painting, Eye and Cross 5th.
Born in 1927 in Rome, Dorazio studied painting, drawing, and architecture at the University of Rome. In the late 1940s, the artist became active in a variety of artistic and literary circles, along with figures including Gino Severini and Renato Guttuso. He went on to become a co-founder of Forma 1, the first group of Italian abstract artists. In 1953, he traveled to New York, where he met the painters Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, and Franz Kline. He held his first solo exhibition at the Wittenborn One-Wall Gallery in New York the same year, and went on to hold a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania, helping to found the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, among other globally renowned institutions.
Provenance:
Casa d'Aste Meeting Art S.p.A., October 1, 2022, lot 70
Private Collection, Stockholm