- Artist
- Gianni Dova 1925–1991
- Original title
- Esplosione
- Medium
- Enamel on canvas
- Dimensions
- Support: 797 × 702 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Presented by Charles Damiano 1956
- Reference
- T00085
Catalogue entry
Gianni Dova born 1925T00085 Explosion 1953
Inscribed 'dova g. 53' on back of canvas
Oil on canvas, 31 3/8 x 27 5/8 (80 x 70)
Presented by Charles Damiano 1956
Prov: Charles Damiano, London (purchased from the artist)
Lit: Tristan Sauvage, Arte Nucleare (Milan 1962), p.20
This is one of the blot-like pictures which Dova painted between 1950 and 1953 largely by pouring or dripping glazes onto his canvases. Sergio Dangelo has described the origins of this style in a tape-recorded interview of which extracts are published by Sauvage, loc. cit.: 'One afternoon, at the Jamaica Bar [in Milan], I met Peverelli and Dova, who swore only by Pollock and Wols. The date I don't remember, but think it must have been the first week of October, 1950. Dova remarked that he wanted to buy some tins of enamel and quite casually we went with him, first to Crespi the stationers, and then, tins in our pockets, to the room he occupied in Via Solferino, which served him also as a studio. Here, with passion, Dova turned out the enamels onto canvases, and we were emotionally shaken by an explosion of colour such as we had never seen before.'
Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.178, reproduced p.178
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