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拍品专文
Translating to ‘King of lightning’ or ‘Lightning King,’ Enrico Donati’s 1945 composition Roi d’éclair depicts a fiery, enigmatic form amidst an undulating blue landscape. Using a nuanced play of vibrant tones which shift and move under our gaze, in the present work Donati creates a mystical sense of drama and intensity, conjuring a striking otherworldly vision in which a vaporous, monumental creature towers majestically before the viewer.
Born in Milan in 1909, Donati moved to Paris as a student in the early 1930s where he first discovered the radical language of the Surrealists which, along with the sacred artefacts of Native American cultures he came across at the city’s Musée de l’Homme, had an enormous impact on his imagination. He subsequently spent several months travelling through the American Southwest and Canadian Northwest during the mid-1930s, immersing himself in the mythology and art of the Apache, Hopi, and Zuni tribes, before returning to Europe to complete his artistic studies. Under the growing threat of the Second World War, Donati relocated to New York, where he met the renowned historian Lionello Venturi. This encounter was a turning point in his career, as Venturi introduced Donati to André Breton in 1942, when, in typical spontaneous fashion, Breton pronounced the young Italian artist a Surrealist on the spot.
Fascinated by the lyrical beauty and mysterious tension of Donati’s unique paintings, Breton proclaimed: ‘I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May’ (in Enrico Donati, exh. cat., Passedoit Gallery, New York, 1944). Introductions to key figures in the Surrealist pantheon – including Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst and Roberto Matta, who similarly had relocated to New York in anticipation of the European conflict – soon followed. ‘I was just a kid,’ Donati later recalled, ‘… but Breton accepted me into the Surrealist movement. Suddenly I was surrounded by giants…’ (quoted in A. Jones, ‘Interview with Donati,’ in Arts 65, no. 8, April 1991, p. 17).
Donati felt a kindred calling towards the Surrealist’s exploration of the human psyche, notably the primal and often irrational elements which govern our actions as well as our creativity. He explored his own unconscious in order to develop a dynamic Surrealist visual style, often creating imaginary scenes of nature where the elements of air and water seem interchangeable and amorphous creatures roam. These sweeping panoramas, whose titles were often chosen by Breton, were depicted using a technique that welcomed chance and accidental effect, lending the surface of Donati’s paintings an intuitive quality which requires close examination in order to fully appreciate the complexity of the image.
Born in Milan in 1909, Donati moved to Paris as a student in the early 1930s where he first discovered the radical language of the Surrealists which, along with the sacred artefacts of Native American cultures he came across at the city’s Musée de l’Homme, had an enormous impact on his imagination. He subsequently spent several months travelling through the American Southwest and Canadian Northwest during the mid-1930s, immersing himself in the mythology and art of the Apache, Hopi, and Zuni tribes, before returning to Europe to complete his artistic studies. Under the growing threat of the Second World War, Donati relocated to New York, where he met the renowned historian Lionello Venturi. This encounter was a turning point in his career, as Venturi introduced Donati to André Breton in 1942, when, in typical spontaneous fashion, Breton pronounced the young Italian artist a Surrealist on the spot.
Fascinated by the lyrical beauty and mysterious tension of Donati’s unique paintings, Breton proclaimed: ‘I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May’ (in Enrico Donati, exh. cat., Passedoit Gallery, New York, 1944). Introductions to key figures in the Surrealist pantheon – including Marcel Duchamp, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst and Roberto Matta, who similarly had relocated to New York in anticipation of the European conflict – soon followed. ‘I was just a kid,’ Donati later recalled, ‘… but Breton accepted me into the Surrealist movement. Suddenly I was surrounded by giants…’ (quoted in A. Jones, ‘Interview with Donati,’ in Arts 65, no. 8, April 1991, p. 17).
Donati felt a kindred calling towards the Surrealist’s exploration of the human psyche, notably the primal and often irrational elements which govern our actions as well as our creativity. He explored his own unconscious in order to develop a dynamic Surrealist visual style, often creating imaginary scenes of nature where the elements of air and water seem interchangeable and amorphous creatures roam. These sweeping panoramas, whose titles were often chosen by Breton, were depicted using a technique that welcomed chance and accidental effect, lending the surface of Donati’s paintings an intuitive quality which requires close examination in order to fully appreciate the complexity of the image.