10. Anna Maria Maiolino
Brazil b. 1942
Untitled (from the series ‘Projetos Construidos’) signed and dated “Anna Maria Maiolino 1975” lower right; further signed, titled, numbered and dated “Anna Maria Maiolino - 1974 - 1/5 + 1 prototipo 2007 - s/titulo de Série: “Projetos Construidos” on the reverse India ink and Letraset on paper in wooden box 28 1/8 x 38 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. (71.4 x 98.4 x 8.3 cm) Conceived in 1974-1975 and executed in 2007, this work is number 1 from an edition of 5. Estimate $40,000-60,000 Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner Exhibited New York, Hauser & Wirth, Sensitive Geometries. Brazil 1950s-1980s, September 12-October 26, 2013 (another example exhibited)
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At the age of twelve, Anna Maria Maiolino escaped with her family from post-war Italy and immigrated to Venezuela where she lived until she was eighteen. From there, she relocated to Brazil where she would establish her career as an artist. These drastic cultural and situational changes provoked in Maiolino a desire to represent her personal experience through her work: the sense of being an emigré and therefore belonging nowhere. Maiolino articulates this feeling through constructed objects consisting of layered sheets, cuts, folds, and tears to represent her sense of geographical non-belonging. When she arrived in Brazil during the 1960s, her early works consisted of wood engravings and xylography that exemplifed feelings of loss and absence. This series of woodcuts infuenced her later work, which was also informed by Minimalist, Conceptual and Structuralist practices. The present lot is a prime example of these conceptually intricate and intimate works on paper. Maiolino was always intrigued by the concept of volume: the absent and concealed spaces on the reverse side of sheets of paper. Maiolino explored this idea by literally cutting into the work to reveal negative space, as evidenced by the present lot. In revealing the area behind the paper, she is constructing spatiality and allowing absence to be physically incorporated into the work, thus adding three-dimensionality. More importantly, this construction of spatiality represents her split existence. It proposes the existence of fullness in void, ultimately giving her a sense of wholeness, allowing her to overcome her divided existence.
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