拍品 3469 - A213 战后和当代 - Donnerstag, 26. Juni 2025, 03.00 PM
DOMENICO GNOLI
(Rom 1933–1970 New York City)
Zipper no. 2 (Zip). 1968.
Acrylic and sand on canvas.
Signed, titled, dated, numbered and with measurements on the reverse: 1 D. Gnoli 1968 "Zip" (1,85 × 0,89).
195 × 89 cm.
Provenance:
- Private collection, Switzerland.
- Private collection, Switzerland, by descent.
Exhibited:
Literature:
- Luigi Carluccio: Domenico Gnoli, Lausanne 1974.
Domenico Gnoli was one of the most unconventional artistic personalities in post-war Italy. At the beginning of his career his work spanned illustration, theatre and painting , but in the 1960s he developed a pictorial language that made him internationally famous - and still to this day positions him as a singular figure within modern art.
Gnoli was born in Rome on 3 May 1933. He grew up in a family steeped in culture: his father, Umberto Gnoli, was an art historian, his mother, Annie de Garrou, a painter and ceramicist. His interest in drawing and visual storytelling was encouraged early on. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and furthered his education in London at the Slade School of Fine Art - two institutions that afforded him both technical foundations and an international perspective.
As early as the early 1950s, Gnoli began to emerge as an illustrator and set designer. His works for theatre productions - including at the Old Vic in London - are characterised by a fine balance between realism and aesthetic abstraction. At the same time, he made a name for himself in New York as an illustrator for major magazines such as Vogue, Time, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker. These activities cemented his reputation as a subtle designer who captured forms precisely and yet charged them with humour and poetry.
However, a change occurred in the mid-1950s. Gnoli gradually moved away from applied art in favour of painting itself. From the early 1960s onwards, he developed an unmistakable pictorial language, which, through the use of close-ups and the isolation of banal objects and fragmented views of the body, created a new aesthetic experience. Oversized depictions of chair covers, items of clothing, hair partings or the soles of shoes transform the everyday into the enigmatic - it is an art of enlargement, alienation and latent tension.
The most important phase of his work began around 1964, the year in which Gnoli took part in documenta III in Kassel - a significant milestone in his career. From then on, his work was exhibited internationally and increasingly recognised as an extraordinary synthesis of Surrealism, Pop Art and metaphysical painting. Unlike that of his American contemporaries, Gnoli's art did not aim to criticise consumerism or mass culture, but rather to take a quiet, almost existential look at things. His motifs are fragmentary, devoid of people and at the same time deeply human.
Domenico Gnoli's painting technique is as precise as it is unconventional - it reflects his dual background in illustration and traditional painting. His paintings are characterised by exceptional clarity, materiality and formal discipline. Gnoli worked predominantly with acrylic paint and sand on canvas. The sand mixed in with the paint gives the surface a grainy, material texture - a tactile quality that makes his motifs (fabrics, hair, leather, wood) almost tangible. The relief-like texture has the effect of deliberately emphasising the materiality of what is depicted without tipping over into the three-dimensional. It reinforces the tension between proximity and abstraction, between objecthood and ornament.
The colour palette is mostly muted, often reduced to a few earthy tones, shades of grey and beige. Gnoli's use of colour does not serve to convey emotion, but rather to emphasise form, surface and rhythm. His paintings were the result of a highly controlled process, starting with precise drawings and preparatory studies (see Fig. 2, sketch, photo credit Yannick Vu). The final composition is often based on an extreme close-up view - a collar, a hair parting, a backrest - isolated from the body, from any context, from the world.
The work presented here from 1968, ‘Zipper no. 2’, is a fine example from the most important period in his oeuvre: the frontal and vertical close-up of the zip is not a decorative detail but staged as a central pictorial element. Possibly it was part of an item of clothing such as a jacket, skirt, dress or trousers. The depiction is so greatly enlarged that the usual sense of scale is suspended. What is normally overlooked now imposes itself on the viewer - it dominates the picture surface with an unexpected presence.
Gnoli was not interested in the narrative function of the zip, but in its formal and metaphorical dimension. As a mechanical connecting element, the zip symbolises opening and closing, access and concealment, intimacy and distance. It marks a boundary, a seam where two sides come together - or separate from each other. In ‘Zipper no. 2’, the zip also has an almost sculptural quality. Its teeth look like architectural elements, clearly articulated and rhythmically arranged.
In 1968, Domenico Gnoli was living and working in Deià, a picturesque village on the island of Mallorca, Spain. He settled there in 1963 with his wife Yannick Vu. He had a studio in a former country house. Many of his characteristic works were created in this setting. He was often photographed with his finished works on his terrace in s'Estaca in Mallorca. A photo was taken in the winter of 1968 with ‘Zipper no. 2’ (see Fig. 3). Although the work is titled “Zip” on the reverse by the artist's hand, this painting is known as “Zipper no 2”, as the second painting with a zipper motif.
Although he died in 1970 at the age of just 36, he left behind a body of work that still seems timeless in its formal rigour and thematic depth. During his short but intensive career, Gnoli became internationally recognised above all through his exhibitions in Paris, New York, Brussels and Kassel. His collaboration with prominent gallery owners such as Alexandre Iolas and Sidney Janis (see Fig. 4) was decisive for his status as an ‘artist between worlds’ - between Europe and America, between Surrealism and Pop Art, between illustration and painting.
Gnoli was born in Rome on 3 May 1933. He grew up in a family steeped in culture: his father, Umberto Gnoli, was an art historian, his mother, Annie de Garrou, a painter and ceramicist. His interest in drawing and visual storytelling was encouraged early on. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and furthered his education in London at the Slade School of Fine Art - two institutions that afforded him both technical foundations and an international perspective.
As early as the early 1950s, Gnoli began to emerge as an illustrator and set designer. His works for theatre productions - including at the Old Vic in London - are characterised by a fine balance between realism and aesthetic abstraction. At the same time, he made a name for himself in New York as an illustrator for major magazines such as Vogue, Time, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker. These activities cemented his reputation as a subtle designer who captured forms precisely and yet charged them with humour and poetry.
However, a change occurred in the mid-1950s. Gnoli gradually moved away from applied art in favour of painting itself. From the early 1960s onwards, he developed an unmistakable pictorial language, which, through the use of close-ups and the isolation of banal objects and fragmented views of the body, created a new aesthetic experience. Oversized depictions of chair covers, items of clothing, hair partings or the soles of shoes transform the everyday into the enigmatic - it is an art of enlargement, alienation and latent tension.
The most important phase of his work began around 1964, the year in which Gnoli took part in documenta III in Kassel - a significant milestone in his career. From then on, his work was exhibited internationally and increasingly recognised as an extraordinary synthesis of Surrealism, Pop Art and metaphysical painting. Unlike that of his American contemporaries, Gnoli's art did not aim to criticise consumerism or mass culture, but rather to take a quiet, almost existential look at things. His motifs are fragmentary, devoid of people and at the same time deeply human.
Domenico Gnoli's painting technique is as precise as it is unconventional - it reflects his dual background in illustration and traditional painting. His paintings are characterised by exceptional clarity, materiality and formal discipline. Gnoli worked predominantly with acrylic paint and sand on canvas. The sand mixed in with the paint gives the surface a grainy, material texture - a tactile quality that makes his motifs (fabrics, hair, leather, wood) almost tangible. The relief-like texture has the effect of deliberately emphasising the materiality of what is depicted without tipping over into the three-dimensional. It reinforces the tension between proximity and abstraction, between objecthood and ornament.
The colour palette is mostly muted, often reduced to a few earthy tones, shades of grey and beige. Gnoli's use of colour does not serve to convey emotion, but rather to emphasise form, surface and rhythm. His paintings were the result of a highly controlled process, starting with precise drawings and preparatory studies (see Fig. 2, sketch, photo credit Yannick Vu). The final composition is often based on an extreme close-up view - a collar, a hair parting, a backrest - isolated from the body, from any context, from the world.
The work presented here from 1968, ‘Zipper no. 2’, is a fine example from the most important period in his oeuvre: the frontal and vertical close-up of the zip is not a decorative detail but staged as a central pictorial element. Possibly it was part of an item of clothing such as a jacket, skirt, dress or trousers. The depiction is so greatly enlarged that the usual sense of scale is suspended. What is normally overlooked now imposes itself on the viewer - it dominates the picture surface with an unexpected presence.
Gnoli was not interested in the narrative function of the zip, but in its formal and metaphorical dimension. As a mechanical connecting element, the zip symbolises opening and closing, access and concealment, intimacy and distance. It marks a boundary, a seam where two sides come together - or separate from each other. In ‘Zipper no. 2’, the zip also has an almost sculptural quality. Its teeth look like architectural elements, clearly articulated and rhythmically arranged.
In 1968, Domenico Gnoli was living and working in Deià, a picturesque village on the island of Mallorca, Spain. He settled there in 1963 with his wife Yannick Vu. He had a studio in a former country house. Many of his characteristic works were created in this setting. He was often photographed with his finished works on his terrace in s'Estaca in Mallorca. A photo was taken in the winter of 1968 with ‘Zipper no. 2’ (see Fig. 3). Although the work is titled “Zip” on the reverse by the artist's hand, this painting is known as “Zipper no 2”, as the second painting with a zipper motif.
Although he died in 1970 at the age of just 36, he left behind a body of work that still seems timeless in its formal rigour and thematic depth. During his short but intensive career, Gnoli became internationally recognised above all through his exhibitions in Paris, New York, Brussels and Kassel. His collaboration with prominent gallery owners such as Alexandre Iolas and Sidney Janis (see Fig. 4) was decisive for his status as an ‘artist between worlds’ - between Europe and America, between Surrealism and Pop Art, between illustration and painting.
CHF 1 000 000 / 1 500 000 | (€ 1 030 930 / 1 546 390)
以瑞士法郎銷售 CHF 3 072 000 (包含買家佣金)
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