1st Sep, 2019 9:30
Modern & Contemporary Art
70
Edoardo Villa (South Africa 1915-2011)
Janus
painted steel
Artwork date: 1988
Signature details: signed and dated
Sold for R512,100
Estimated at R500,000 - R700,000
painted steel
Artwork date: 1988
Signature details: signed and dated
(1)
121 x 130 x 150 cm
Notes:
Karel Nel et al refer to the late 1980s as a “simplifying pause” in Edoardo Villa’s career[i] in which he restricted himself to working with bold elements as in Looking at the Sun (1987) in which “colour emphasises the dialogue between the interior and exterior parts of the work, with startling bright yellow inside the pipes asserting itself against the somber black of the exterior. Despite the evocative titles, these are some of Villa’s most strongly non-figurative works”.[ii] San Sebastiano, produced in 1986 and acquired by the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1987 for the entrance platform is a comparably bold sculptural statement in steel, evoking the materials and industrial forms of the sophisticated city which drives the country’s economy. Villa’s genius lies in this extraordinary capacity to conjure images of our time and place from the contemporary industrial materials being generated by new technologies. Janus, produced in 1988, is no exception.Bright yellow emerges from the powerful black forms of Janus that can be viewed in the round. In Roman myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. As a god of transitions, he has functions pertaining to birth, journeys and exchange, and is associated with travelling, trading and shipping.Villa’s modernist vision was shared by his great friend, Carmel Back, one of the first woman architects to shape the evolving image of Johannesburg. They recognised each other as fellow visionaries and, according to Back’s daughter, enjoyed a lasting friendship during which they met regularly on most Saturdays to people gaze and gossip over good coffee. Villa created Janus as a house-warming gift to the architect for her new home in Parktown, which featured prominently in design publications in the early 1990s.
Emma Bedford
Sources:
[i] Nel, K., Burroughs, E. and Von Maltitz, A. (2005). Villa at 90: His Life, Work and Influence. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball Publishers with Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing. p. 96.
[ii] Ibid.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 1st Sep, 2019
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