MILAN.- Christie’s will present the annual sale of Milan Modern and Contemporary on 5 & 6 April 2016 at Palazzo Clerici, Milan. Following the strong results of last year’s auction, which was 100% sold in the evening section, realising over €20 million – a record for this category in Italy – and saw bidders from over 20 countries, this year continues to meet the ever-growing appetite for Italian art. The auction will offer a wide array of the great Post-War figures including Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Enrico Castellani and Piero Manzoni; favourites from the Arte Povera canon – Alighiero Boetti, Pier Paolo Calzolari and Giulio Paolini; Pop art pioneers Mimmo Rotella and Tano Festa; as well as Modern classics by Gino Severini and Giacomo Balla. Highlights include an intricate and colourful embroidery, which forms part of Alighiero Boetti’s most famous ‘Mappe’ (Maps) series of artworks (1983, estimate: €800,000-1,200,000.

Renato Pennisi, Director and Senior Specialist, Head of Sale, Christie's Italy: "We are pleased to present a rich array of works, which show the great variety of twentieth century Italian art movements. We are offering masterpieces ranging from early Futurism, Arte Povera icons through to the Masters of the Second World War - Fontana, Burri and Manzoni - and sections devoted to Pop art and Optical art."

FUTURISMO: THE FIRST AVANT-GARDE
Headlining the auction are a pair of works that epitomise the revolutionary nature of the Futurist movement; Gino Severini’s Tango Argentino (executed in 1913, estimate: €400,000-700,000) and Giacomo Balla’s Complesso colorato di frastuono + velocitá (c.1914, estimate: €400,000-600,000) are presented alongside works by Roberto Marcello Iras Baldessari and Gerardo Dottori. Coming to auction for the first time, and originating from a private collection, Severini’s Tango Argentino dates from when he was at the height of his artistic powers and captures the intricate, dynamic movements of the modern dancer, caught up in the rhythm of the latest fashionable dance.

Another debut auction appearance, Balla’s Complesso colorato di frastuono + velocitá was completed at the same time as when he was a leading proponents of the famous Futurist manifesto, glorifying the speed, noise and light of the modern world. Composed of a complex abstract web of inerlocking planes of colour the work exudes a pulsating dynamism, heightened by radiant shades of red, orange and blue.

POST-WAR ITALIAN HEROES
Discerning collectors and enthusiasts of Fontana’s work will be offered a breadth of works by the artist, including Crocifisso (estimate: €300,000-500,000), a powerful and dynamic glazed ceramic sculpture that was executed in 1949 and combines an expressive figuration with the concepts of nascent Spatialism, Other examples of this series of works are now held in a number of museums across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Additional works by Fontana that feature in the sale include Concetto spaziale, Attese (1966, estimate: €600,000-900,000), a cerulean sea of paint sliced through four times and an example of his most famous series of cut paintings.

More Post-War Italian heroes represented in the sale include Enrico Castellani, whose Senza titolo (superficie bianca) (1959-60, estimate: €250,000-350,000) is from the Collection of Jules and Marie Wabbest and is a clean, unbroken surface of cool tactility; and Paolo Scheggi, who features in the sale with Zone riflesse (1962, estimate: €250,000-350,000) and Intersuperficie curva (1969, estimate: €300,000-500,000), pioneering examples of his monochrome layered works that made paintings as objects. Piero Manzoni’s Achrome (1962-63; estimate: €250,000-350,000) is another leading work in the auction and is one of Manzoni’s celebrated series of works that employed Polystyrene and kaolin.

ALBERTO BURRI’S COMBUSTIONE PLASTICHE
Another section of the sale will be dedicated to the founding moments of Alberto Burri’s career. One of the first European avant-garde artists to consistently use fire in his art, Burri, like many of his European counterparts, realised that pictorial mimesis and illusionism was futile and that a new mode of picture making needed to be found.

Burri’s Combustione (1964, estimate: €400,000-600,000) comes to the market for the first time, having remained in the same collection to the present day. Another example of Burri’s pioneering practice, Rosso Plastica (1961 estimate: €180,000-250,000) is a glowing red cellotex plane adorned with dramatically scorched and cindered pieces of burnt plastic. An early example of his series of Combustioni plastiche or plastic combustions that he began around 1960 this work dates from a period of experimentation in Burri’s career that realised the creativity of destruction.

FURTHER HIGHLIGHTS
The auction will also include firm favourites from the Arte Povera canon, such as Boetti’s Mappa alongside Pier Paolo Calzolari and Giulio Paolini. Calzolari’s Sensa titolo (1974, estimate: €100,000-150,000), employs a haunting cascade of alchemical materials lit with glowing burners that sit behind sheets of lead, tin and iron, evoking the candlelight chiaroscuro of baroque painting.

The depth and breadth of the material on offer this April is demonstrated by further highlights of the sale including Pop practitioners Mimmo Rotella and Tano Festa, who is represented in the sale by Via Veneto 2 (1961, estimate: €60,000 – 90,000). Festa first came to the fore through Galleria La Salita owned by Gian Tomaso Liverani (from where this work originates), at that time one of the most prestigious exhibition spaces in Rome for contemporary art. Another major draw will be the selection of Optical Art, featuring works by artists including Franco Grignani, Alberto Biasi, Mario Ballocco and Dadamaino who were all central to the development of the Optical Art movement in Milan and broke the boundaries of art, science and design to discover new optical possibilities and visual thrills during a revolutionary time for Italian art.