Edoardo Villa e-Catalog by Breinstorm Brand Architects

True Design, in partnership with Strauss & Co, is proud to host a comprehensive exhibition of the sculpture of Edoardo Villa, arguably the most popular of post-war contemporary sculptors in South Africa. This collection facilitates the Villa dream of human participation, physical proximity and tactile engagement with his works and showcases works from all phases of his career, including a very early work, Seated Figure (1953) - a sculpture possibly referencing Alberto Giacometti’s elongated figures - and Vertical Form (1958) - which inspired the body of work Villa developed for his participation in the Venice Biennale of 1958, where he showed with Alexander Calder.

In the early 60s, Villa became part of the Amadlosi Group, a collective brought together by gallerist Egon Guenther, and included artists such as Giuseppe Cattaneo, Sydney Kumalo, Cecily Sash and Cecil Skotnes. The word ‘amadlosi’ means the ‘spirit of the ancestors’, and that is what Villa strove for in his art. The influence of African art on his work is clearly visible in the mask-like Heraldic Figure (1963), as well as in Masai Girl (1963) and Head (1964).

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After being a prisoner of war in South Africa I decided to stay and start my career because the opportunities available for the youth, the ‘open space’ as opposed to the ‘closed’ life of a continental. Everything in Europe, I felt, had been done, questioned and exhausted. Here, in Africa, I felt I had the opportunity to explore… If anything could sum up my fundamental concern in art, it is that of the human and the individual – the human condition… museums are fine but human participation, physical proximity and tactile engagement are more important. - Edoardo Villa

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In the 70s, Villa worked extensively with steel, and the sculpture Tree (1977) is a classic example from this period. The work references the early twentieth century cubist style of Picasso and Braque, as well as Mondrian’s series of increasingly abstract deconstructed trees. Villa’s imposing War Figure (1980) could be seen as a comment on the volatile political situation in South Africa at the time it was made, and his ‘solution’ to the political stalemate in the country, it can be argued, is to be found in works such as The Conversation (1980).

Villa constructed an indelible place for himself in the history of South African sculpture. Esmé Berman distinguishes between carvers (including such sculptors as Willem Hendrickz, Elsa Dziomba, Zoltan Borbereki, Lucas Sithole, Moses Kottler and Lippy Lipshitz), modellers (including such sculptors as Anton van Wouw, Fanie Eloff, Coert Steynberg, Gerrit de Leeuw, Sydney Kumalo, Bruce Arnott and Ezrom Legae) and the fabricators and constructors, such as Edoardo Villa (and others such as Ian Redelinghuys, Gavin Younge, Malcolm Payne and Vincent Baloyi).

Villa and his the ‘’constructors’’ were in perfect step with international trends in sculpture such as those spearheaded by the likes of David Smith in the US and Anthony Caro in the UK.