Rudolf Stingel - 20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale London Tuesday, February 9, 2016 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galleria Luigi De Ambrogi, Milan
    Private Collection, Switzerland
    Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art Day Auction, 16 February 2012, lot 326
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

  • Catalogue Essay

    Rising to prominence in the late 1980s with his monochromatic works, Rudolf Stingel has developed a unique style of painting which attempts to subvert the traditional structure of artistic creation. Examining the crucial issues regarding painting nowadays – figuration, abstraction, meaning and context – he freed painting from the limiting idea of simple representation, and Untitled, 1986 is an important early evidence of this.

    Untitled is a beautiful work from 1986; the distinct, energetic brushstrokes and fascinating shades of dark and light green remind the viewer of Rudolf Stingel’s childhood spent in between Austria and the Tyrol. The innovation Stingel brought to his artistic production concerns his effort to overcome the bridge between figuration and abstraction: at once performances and gestures, Stingel’s work attempts to reconcile the present moment with eternal time, so as to focus on the pattern of history, which blends in figurative images and abstract visions of the future.

  • Artist Biography

    Rudolf Stingel

    Italian • 1956

    Rudolf Stingel came to prominence in the late 1980s for his insistence on the conceptual act of painting in a context in which it had been famously declared dead. Despite the prevailing minimalist and conceptual narrative of the time, the Italian-born artist sought to confront the fundamental aspirations and failures of Modernist painting through the very medium of painting itself. While his works do not always conform to the traditional definitions of painting, their attention to surface, space, color and image provide new and expanded ways of thinking about the process and "idea" of painting. Central to his multifarious and prolific oeuvre is an examination of the passage of time and the probing of the fundamental questions of authenticity, meaning, hierarchy, authorship and context by dislocating painting both internally and in time and space. Stingel is best known for his wall-to-wall installations, constructed of fabric or malleable Celotex sheets, as well as his seemingly more traditional oil-on-canvas paintings.

    View More Works

124

Untitled

1986
oil and enamel on canvas
87 x 117.2 cm (34 1/4 x 46 1/8 in.)

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for £62,500

Contact Specialist
Henry Highley
Head of Sale
+ 44 20 7318 4061

20th Century & Contemporary Art Day Sale

London Auction 10 February 2016 2pm