PROVENANCE
Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary
Private Collection, Toronto

LITERATURE
Gilles Daigneault and Margarida Mafra, editors, Molinari, Guido Molinari Foundation, 2018, essay by Roald Nasgaard, “Le théoricien du molinarisme,” page 96

For Guido Molinari, the 1950s was a stimulating and creative decade. In the autumn of 1953, after a period spent focused on drawing, Molinari returned to painting with a renewed vigour, producing a series of small oils. He juxtaposed patches of colour layered with a palette knife, applied in an intuitive and automated way, the colour patches pushing up against each other and bleeding slightly at the edges, filling the entire space. Sans titre is a vibrantly hued and robustly textured example of this new approach.

The paintings of this time were considered tachiste in style. Roald Nasgaard, quoting Molinari, wrote of the intent of these “spattered daubs,” which “can be situated as colour-energy [so that] their interrelations create a non-Euclidean energetic space of infinite possibilities.” Molinari used pure tones, placing colour next to colour in a style of abstraction that creates a lively tension within the composition. Sans titre is an outstanding work from this creative and tactile phase, before his surfaces became smooth, his hard edges refined and precise with the minimal brushwork of his Stripe and Quantificateur series.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars