Edoardo Villa: Reclining Figure - SOLD
Edoardo Villa (b 1915)
Reclining Figure - 1967
Bronze with green patina – Edition no. 6/6
Height: 36 cm
Signed
Sold - 2011
Over seven decades, Edoardo Villa’s work has undergone remarkable stylistic transformations on his journey to become the foremost abstract sculptor in South Africa. Figurative, descriptive heads, busts and reliefs gave way to the stylized abstraction of modernist shapes inspired by the African landscape, and finally to the colourful works of structural abstraction which typify the latter part of his oeuvre. According to Berman, Villa’s work transformed the way in which South Africans perceive sculpture: it is in the conceptual substance of his oeuvre that his most significant achievement lies. Edoardo Villa has been uniquely able to translate his South African experience into symbolic visual form .
Villa was an Italian prisoner of war, sent to South Africa, and decided to stay on after his release. He settled in Johannesburg, and explored an ‘African’ character in his work, drawing inspiration from the visual stimuli offered in the dramatic natural features of his adopted home. These manifested themselves in his work as sharp contours and intersecting flat and curved planes, interpreting the character of the surrounding landscape to form an appropriate abstract language. According to Esmé Berman, his work spoke convincingly, not of the appearance, but of the experience of Africa .
One of the major characteristics of Villa’s work has been that, no matter how abstract it became, a certain anthropomorphism was almost always present; the human form has always been central to his vision .
The title ‘Reclining figure’, however simple, provides a much needed clue to a somewhat over abstracted subject, urging the viewer to search for evidence of the body, and by doing so, allowing for exciting visual conclusions. Looking at Villa’s reclining figures one cannot ignore the influence of Cubism in the conception and treatment of these bronzes. Cubism allows planar aspects to predominate, while closed sculptural volume is broken into multiple planes, embracing space and thereby deliberately dissipating the sculptural core and any consolidated gestalt. This approach pushes the viewer towards dramatically changing viewpoints, emphasizing the flatter pictorial abstraction.
Villa’s reclining figures also resonate with Henry Moore’s characteristic signature forms. Moore’s reclining figures, originally inspired by a Toltec-Mayan figure he had seen at the Louvre, evolved from the inspiration provided by the organic shapes of stones and bones. Villa’s modeled figures, however, emerge from bold underlying geometric forms, presented in the sensuous texture and patina of bronze. These works, however small in scale, have a monumental presence because of their passive mass, but nevertheless, effortlessly transform themselves into different persona under the play of light.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E.P Engel (Ed), Edoardo Villa Sculpture , South Africa, 1980, pp 142-150
Karel Nel, Elizabeth Burroughs, Amalie Von Maltitz (Eds.), Villa at 90 , Johannesburg, 2005, pp 4, 6, 60 and 128