Roxana Scripcaru
Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office
66. Le sarcophage rouge [1983]
The photos of the lot are informative and indicative, and cannot provide a highly detailed view of the object from all angles. We recommend a careful physical inspection of the lot before bidding.
66. Le sarcophage rouge [1983]
1922, Bucureşti - 2012, Paris
Estimate:
EUR 2.500 - 3.500
Sold
EUR 2.400
References
The catalogue of the exhibition "Horia Damian", National Museum of Contemporary Art, September-October 2009.
gouache, chalk and pencil on paper, 70 x 100 cm, signed, dated and entitled bottom left, with pencil, "Damian, Le sarcophage, 1983"
With an artistic conception on the borderline between graphics, sculpture and architecture, Horia Damian will often move from the two-dimensionality of the drawing to the translation of his concepts into tangible constructions. The cantonment in the abstract-geometricized zone will take place against the background of the - obviously prolific - meetings Damian will have in Paris. Mondrian, Yves Klein or Auguste Herbin are just a few of the big names that influenced the Romanian artist's career. The reconfiguration of his creative itinerary, both in terms of the manner in which it is produced and thematically, thus takes place against the backdrop of this change in geographical placement. Concerns about architectural forms converge to reconsider the priorities in Damian's work. The graphic works will occupy, with time, the primary place assigned until recently to painting and will function both as sketches for its future sculptural manifestations and as independent works. Innovative artistic figure of the 20th century, Horia Damian focuses his attention, starting with the 1970s, on the series of sarcophaguses. This was meant to offer continuity to the pyramidal cycle, making reference, more or less, to Antic Egypt. The sarcophagus symbolised, in the period mentioned, the space where the bodies of rulers or wealthy residents, confident in the afterlife, were deposited for eternity. The artist thus shows an undeniable interest in objects with a symbolic charge, which he also codifies in a philosophical key, in a graphic discourse that has at its centre the theme of the axis of the world devoid of human beings.
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Brought to you by
Roxana Scripcaru
Head of the Romanian Postmodern & Contemporary Art Evaluation Office
