painted steel on a steel base sculpture: 133.5 x 50 x 45 cm; base: 43 x 45.5 x 45.5 cm Illustrated on the invitation cover for the Joubert Park Exhibition, 20 September 1960.

Artwork date: 1958
Literature: Engel, E.P. ed. (1980). Edoardo Villa, Sculpture. United Book Distributors, illustrated on p.189, catalogue number 9.

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sculpture: 133.5 x 50 x 45 cm; base: 43 x 45.5 x 45.5 cm

The Monty Sack Collection.

Notes:

Vertical Composition of 1958 is an extremely significant work in that it is one of the earliest extant examples of Villa’s steel sculpture. The piece is to be seen, in part, on the right hand side of a historical photograph of Villa in his Kew studio in 1960 preparing work for his first outdoor sculpture exhibition to be held in Joubert Park, Johannesburg.The works, largely made of steel, were groundbreaking for the time and focused on abstract, planar and linear elements. The innovative body of work started to engage a Modernist aesthetic, the structure of the city and, in contrast, the nature of the African landscape with its distinctive spiky forms.In Vertical Composition, we see the first emergent traces of Villa’s interest in the evocative interplay between abstraction and implied figuration. The emblematic presence in this work is to be the prototype of many to come - sculptures such as the extraordinary Homage to Maillol of 1965, and The Guardian and African Figure of 1966. All these powerful works emphasize a human verticality yet simultaneously embrace architectonic qualities.From this work onward, Villa’s innovative use of steel challenges the memetic canon of South African sculpture, the direct carving and use of traditional materials characteristic of the work of sculptors such as Lippy Lipschitz, Moses Kottler and Elza Dziomba. He steered his own expression closer to the abstract trends of contemporary modernism but was also acutely attentive to reflect his African context and its own distinctiveness.In Vertical Composition, the severe constructed nature of a series of intersecting flat and curved planes creates a number of vertical interior spaces that the eye traverses and inhabits. These spaces share the evocative qualities of some surrealist works, such as Giacometti’s sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m. from 1932.The complex interplay of planes and stacked spaces creates a vertical presence, with the extended flat plane at the pinnacle of the work reading as an abstract signifier of a head, or the spiky elements in the substructure that touch the base lightly alluding to legs.Finally, the importance of the work is that it is the precursor to Villa’s monumental work Africa, commissioned the following year, in 1959, for the Union Pavilion at Milner Park, Johannesburg.Africa consolidates Villa’s interest in the interplay of the abstract reading of verticality and horizontality. In viewing the complex steel structure, we become aware of its strong Cubist and Modernist qualities and its indebtedness to the influence of African art. The work heralds the emergence of Villa’s commitment to abstraction, but also embraces the notion of an underlying human presence and allusion to emotive states despite the austerity of steel as his medium.

Karel Nel