KOLLER VIEW 4/22

10 2 Preview of the PostWar & Contemporary Art and Impressionist & Modern Art auctions Arnaldo Pomodoro (born 1926), who trained as a stage designer, has created three-dimensional art since the 1960s. The formal contrast between the polished perfection of archaic, stereometric forms and their chaotic, technically complex interiors has been a constant in Pomodoro’s work. His objects seem like mysterious machines from a science fiction film (ill. 2). In 1966 he was commissioned to design a sphere three and a half metres in diameter for Expo ’67 in Montreal, which now stands in front of the Vil- la Farnesina in Rome. This was the first of the artist’s evocative and symbolic works that have been placed in public spaces: inMilan, Copenhagen, Brisbane, Los An- geles and Darmstadt, in front of Trinity College Dublin, in the Cortile della Pigna of the Vatican Museums, in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York and in the Paris headquarters of UNESCO. Very early on, the Czech painter František Kupka (1871–1957) moved away from realism towards ab- straction. Kupka arrive d in Paris in 1895 from Prague by way of Vienna, whe re he barely managed to make a living as a fash ion illustrator and caricaturist. While his first creative phase was still strongly influenced by Art Nouveau and Neo-Im- pression ism, his 1911 encounter with the ‘Pu teaux’ group of artists includ- ing Ja cques Villon and Fernand Léger brou ght about a fundamental stylis- tic c hange: after an intensive study of th e colour theories in Isaac New- ton’ s ‘Opticks’, he turned to abstract pain ting. As early as 1912, Kupka exhib ited at the Salon d’Automne and w as one of the first to present non-re presentational art there. During the very early years of abstraction be- fore the Fir st World War, Kupka painted ‘Le Rouge Emporte’, to be offered in our December auc- tion (ill. 1). The intensive use of the colour red, which practically assaults the viewer’s eye, in combination with vibrating lines and circular outlines, are more reminiscent of the pictorial language of great post- war artists such as Mark Rothko (1903–1970) or Serge Poliakoff (1900–1969). Poliakoff was a generation younger than the Czech and, after initially attempting figurative works, painted in a wholly abstract manner. Between 1950 and 1970 his paintings show a strong polychromy; ‘Bleu et lie de vin’ in our December sale comes from this group of works (ill. 3). Kupka’s early abstraction 1 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART Jara Koller jara.koller@kollerauctions.com POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY ART Silke Stahlschmidt stahlschmidt@kollerauctions.com ONLINE CATALOGUES www.kollerauctions.com © 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich