Enrico Donati: Visions of the Stone

ENRICO DONATI Visions of the Stone

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Enrico Donati Visions of the Stone

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com cover: Atlantis II (detail), 1967, mixed media on canvas, 45 x 39 in

Enrico Donati: Visions of the Stone The world of art is especially fortunate that Enrico Donati lived to the age of 99. It allowed this remarkable Italian-born American artist to create an extraordinary range of paintings and sculptures of diverse styles and genres, and placed him in league with some of the most important figures of 20th century contemporary art.

Gaining notice beginning in the 1940s, Donati’s work was championed by both the Surrealists (André Breton wrote, “I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May....”) and later the Abstract Expressionists (the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery mounted five solo exhibitions for Donati from 1954-1960). Yet Donati’s art, however exemplary of both, defies fitting neatly into either category; instead, his work expresses an especially authentic personal inquiry into cycles of life and the nature of myth and the enigmatic.

In this exhibition entitled Visions of the Stone, LewAllen Galleries presents 23 major paintings from the period 1954 through 2000 representing some of the most interesting and alluring of Donati’s abstract works from successive series of mixed media paintings, rendered with rich colors, evocative forms, and various materials he mixed with oil paint. These added materials are as diversely exotic as coffee grounds, coconut shell, the “inhalations of vacuum cleaners,” ground quartz and sand. His mixed media works gained widespread acclaim beginning in the mid 1950s for their factures of mystery and their power to educe reactions both meditative and intrigued.

Donati was not only a gifted visual artist but also a man of enormous intellectual interests and acuity. Born in Milan, Italy in 1909, he received a doctorate at the University of Pavia in 1928 in what today would be called sociology. He also had an early interest in music composition and piano performance, ultimately attending the Milan Conservatory. He spent several years in Paris composing avant-garde music. During his years in Paris, Donati spent his spare time in galleries and museums educating himself in drawing and art history.

In 1934, he traveled to North America to pursue an interest in Native American artifacts and cultures, an interest he had acquired while residing in Paris. He spent months living on Indian reservations in Arizona and New Mexico and with the Eskimos in Canada. Donati was pro2

foundly influenced by his experience with these people and by the spirit of enigmatic mystery their objects possessed. Many of the objects he collected adorned the walls of his studio for the rest of his life.

By 1936, he had abandoned his hopes for a career as a composer and returned to Paris, where he enrolled at the academic École de la rue de Berri to pursue seriously a more formal education in art and a professional career as an artist. Escaping Hitler’s invasion of France in 1940, Donati and his family moved to New York for good. In 1943, he had his first solo exhibition of paintings at the New School for Social Research in New York. That led to his meeting the legendary founder of Surrealism André Breton who, like many European Modern artists of the time (Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Leger, Piet Mondrian, Yves Tanguy, and others), had escaped the war by moving to New York. Breton liked Donati’s paintings and immediately pronounced him “a Surrealist.”

In addition to his accomplished interests in drawing, painting, music, sociology, anthropology, cultural iconography, chemistry, geology and life sciences, Donati was developing a deepened interest in the metaphysical mysteries of existence and the genesis of the creative process.

He had a particular fascination with the cyclical nature of the world – birth, life, death, regeneration – and saw its parallels with the transformative process that occurs in the making of art. This interest would inform his work for the balance of his career and bring to it aspects of personal interiority, primal mysticism, and a remarkable sense of alluring perplexity. In the gentle abyss of mystery there lies the magic of beauty that touches something deep within us.

As the art writer Theodore Wolff has noted, “Few painters of his generation had as direct a line into their subconscious as Donati.… [He] produced remarkably authentic and only slightly edited accounts of what he had sensed and ‘seen’ at his deepest, most intuitive level. Donati’s images sprang directly, and in some cases almost full-blown, from his subconscious.”

Donati, like others in the Surrealist movement, made use of automatism as a means to access this realm of the subconscious, by which he expressed his gestures onto canvas. It may be 3

seen as one explanation for the thematic ambiguity in his work as well as the aura of engaging mystery and enchantment that surrounds it.

Thus it was on this intellectual and creative foundation that the works in this exhibition were founded. Donati remained in New York after the end of World War II when Abstract Expressionism (the New York School) was becoming the predominant genre. He was in the thick of the new movement, with his work being represented by the legendary Betty Parsons Gallery alongside the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, and other stars of Abstract Expressionism. Though Donati was well-known to follow his own drummer when it came to artistic direction, nevertheless he began to move increasingly toward an abstraction of his own unique sort.

By the mid 1950s, Donati had evolved a style of work featuring highly tactile surfaces encrusted with sand or ground quartz mixed with medium and pigment applied to canvas. The surfaces could be as much as an inch thick and are often incised with markings and indentations. The paintings that primarily comprise this Visions of the Stone exhibition are part of the evolution of this direction. Here Donati’s imagery involves a combination of geometric shapes (spheres, rectangles, squares, columns, lines of varying widths, forms of irregular or jagged edges), some floating together with others, some seeming to fracture, vibrate or undulate, each enlivened by radiant lush colors and the glisten and sparkle of light reflected from thousands of grains of sand or fragments of quartz.

These sumptuous works possess a nearly irresistible presence, as though planetary bodies or magnetic fields are pulsating within them, exercising a pulling force and drawing one’s mind and physical being into convergence inside the paintings. They are visual invitations to contemplation and meditation, engendering a sense of transcendence. It is a pleasure to be in the presence of these paintings and their kind of beauty that moves the inner spirit.

This Donati’s magic: his works incite wonder and astonishment from a nearly alchemical mix of materials from the earth – oil pigments, glues, sand, quartz, and various fibers. The resulting specter of stone and rock is unmistakable in these works and connects Donati’s images to the cycle of life that fascinated him. The surfaces, layered with bits of rocks and stones, 4

metaphorically suggest that ultimate metaphysical view of cyclical reality: “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

It is one of the profound realizations that emerges from Donati’s work that these paintings are largely made from that which is a literal connection to the beginning of time and to time unending. He refers to the stone as “the most pure form of the expression of nature” and says “it is the element that contains the greatest antiquity.” As such, Donati’s paintings are totems of the eternal.

Donati collected rocks that fascinated him, especially agates and fossils. He regarded the fossil as the ultimate symbol for, as well as a literal incarnation of, the course of existence:

"The fossil carries the whole cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth within it. Nature has destroyed the life it once was and has reincarnated in it a new life that will have perpetual existence. This is essentially what I try to do in my work. To me, the fossil contains within itself all the mystery, power, and indestructibility of life."

These paintings are both powerful and mysterious. The forms and structures can be seen in various ways, and the artistic intent is open to multiple interpretations. The possibilities are many, but none are certain. The wonder in the hidden is the delight. Like a poem by Wallace Stevens or music by John Corigliano, there is no clarity of “meaning,” only delicious possibilities. Donati was not revealing; the paintings remain provocative, enigmatic, and enchanting.

Donati’s paintings, with their rocks and stones and mysterious imagery, are remarkable metaphors for the eternal cycle of life, death and regeneration and the insoluble questions contained within it. These works embody the spirit of a pictorial magician whose magic lies in his ability to make art that provokes and perplexes rather than unravels and resolves. For all their mystery, these paintings also emanate a joie de vivre; they engender a sense of pleasure and beauty that is ultimately life-affirming in their connection with the eternal.

Delightfully, that will still be the case a hundred years from now.

Kenneth R. Marvel 5

Lunar Island, 1982, mixed media on canvas, 50 x 50 in

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Black Pumice, c. 1964-68, mixed media on canvas, 20 x 16 in

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San Gimignano XVII, 1979, oil and sand on canvas, 47.625 x 50 in 8

Royal Bayon, 1963, mixed media on canvas, 75 x 60 in 9

Remembrance of Kwai, 1996, acrylic and ground quartz on canvas, 36 x 36 in

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Magnet III, 1967, mixed media on canvas, 46 x 58 in

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The Other Infinite, 1981, oil and mixed media on canvas, 74 x 60 in 12

1 2 versi, linea - quadro, 1954, mixed media on canvas, 27.5 x 23.5 in 13

Ambiance, 1973, mixed media on canvas, 40 x 50 in

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Atlantis II, 1967, mixed media on canvas, 45 x 39 in

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Split Blue, 1964, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 24 in

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Object Utile, 1991, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 32 in

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The Cyclop (Universe Series), 1986, mixed media on canvas, 40 x 50 in

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Walking Stones (Moonscape IV), 1976, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 40 in

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Coptic Wall XXIII, 1980, mixed media on canvas, 42 x 48 in

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Whale Surrounded, 1991, mixed media on canvas, 40 x 50 in

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Obsidian Tablet, 1963, mixed media on canvas, 28 x 24 in

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Untitled, c 1970, oil and sand on canvas, 39.125 x 43.125 inc

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Untitled (Central Park South), c 1960s, mixed media on canvas, 30 x 40 in

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Moonscape, 1982, mixed media on canvas, 39.25 x 43.25 in

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Lago de Nemi, 1983, mixed media on canvas, 40 x 42 in

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Quetzacoatl no. 2, 1964, mixed media, 19.5 x 19.5 in

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Levee de lune, 2000, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in

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Enrico Donati

b: 1909, Milan, Italy d: 2008 in Manhattan, New York, NY

EDUCATION 1929 University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy 1936 Academie Julian on the Rue de Berri, Paris, France 1940 The New School for Social Research, New York, NY SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2014 Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA (also '06, '07, '10) 2007 De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,

San Francisco, CA 2005 Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, Paris, France (also 2004) 1997 Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL

Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY (also '95) 1996 Horwitch Newman Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ (also '95) 1994 Carone Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, FL (also '84, '90, '92)

Louis Newman Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA (also '86, '89, '91) 1989 Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, France 1987 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York, NY (also '86, '84) 1985 Georges Fall, Paris, France 1982 Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (also '77, '79, '80) 1980 Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA 1979 Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

Osuna Gallery, Washington, DC

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC 1978 Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, IA

Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN

Wildenstein Art Center, Houston, TX 1977 Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN

Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL 1976 Staempfli Gallery, New York, NY (also '62, '63, '66, '68, '70,

'72, '74) 1966 J.L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit, MI (also '64) 1965 Obelisk Gallery, Washington, DC 1964 Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Cambridge, MA 1962 Neue Galerie im Kunstlerhaus, Munich, Germany 1961 1960 1958 1956 1953 1952 1950

Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, NY (also '54, '55, '57, '59) Lowe Art Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY Galleria del Naviglio, Milan, Italy (also '52) Galleria d’arte del Cavallino, Venice, Italy (also '52) Alexandre Iolas Gallery, New York, NY Galleria Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan, Italy 29

1949

1947

1944

1943

Galleria del Milione, Milan, Italy Galleria dell'Obelisco, Rome, Italy Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, NY (also '45, '46, '47) A. Weil, Paris, France Gallery Studio, Chicago, IL Krouse College, Syracuse University, NY The Arts Club of Chicago, IL G. Place Gallery, Washington, DC Passedoit Gallery, New York, NY (also '42) New School for Social Research, New York, NY

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY Arturo Schwarz Surrealist Foundation, Milan Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Milan, Italy Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY Newark Museum Association, Newark, NJ Oklahoma City Art Museum, Oklahoma City, OK Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR Rockefeller Institute, Albany, NY Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY Swarthmore College, Philadelphia, PA The Israel Museum, Jerusalem The Lowe Museum, University of Miami, Miami, FL The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | tel 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com Š 2020 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC 32 Artwork Š Estate of Enrico Donati