Sold for: $6,875

PROVENANCE
Fondation Guido Molinari, Montreal

LITERATURE
Bernard Teyssèdre, Un quantificateur de Molinari, May 24, 1995

Please note: the full sheet size is 50 x 38 inches.

Beginning in 1975, Guido Molinari entered an artistic period dedicated to the Quantifiers. For the next twenty years, he would use that series to build the conceptual foundations of a structuring of pictorial space.

The initial canvases of the Quantifiers were painted in black and brown, then blue and red. The decision in 1992 to print them would introduce purple – the sole colour to be used exclusively for the silk-screen medium.

Confronted with these oversized canvases, viewers are guided towards the experience of a bodily and perceptual threshold. The silence surrounding the canvases of the Quantifiers holds our attention and guides our eyes to abstract out of what’s real, in which the genesis of our own framework for apprehending the canvas can take place. The demarcated surfaces, reduced to singular and sombre tonal value, extend across the canvas in a dynamic interrelationship among its constitutive colour fields. The eye must wait patiently for understanding to happen, letting the invisible pictorial traces of the artist emerge. Like an open window on Guido Molinari’s thought, the Quantifiers series brings the doubts and questions underlying his experiments to the pictorial surface. Fighting to go beyond himself, the artist relinquishes the very act of expression in his quest for a perfect colour equilibrium on the very borders of monochrome. A spatial reality that’s quantified by colour, which, to quote the philosopher and writer Bernard Teyssèdre, “through the fiction of measuring space, gives us a measure of time’s energies.”

Consignor proceeds from the sale of this Lot will benefit the Guido Molinari Foundation.

The Buyer is hereby advised to read fully the Terms and Conditions of Business and Catalogue Terms, including the HO2 Sale Notice and Special Terms of Sale.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars

Although great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information posted, errors and omissions may occur. All bids are subject to our Terms and Conditions of Business. Bidders must ensure they have satisfied themselves with the condition of the Lot prior to bidding. Condition reports are available upon request.