Enrico Donati: Prima Materia

ENRICO DONATI PRIMAMATERIA

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Enrico Donati Prima Materia

June 17 - July 16, 2022

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com

cover: Lagash II, 1961, mixed media on canvas, 50.25 x 40 inches

Enrico Donati | Prima materia As perhaps one of the more fascinating figures of 20th century art, Enrico Donati (1909-2008) is known today for creating complex works as part of an ever-evolving inquiry into time, archaeology, and the cycles of the natural world. After escaping the Nazi invasion of France in 1940 and fleeing to New York—and following his associations with the inner circle of Surrealist and Dada artists André Breton and Marcel Duchamp—Donati’s art applied a maverick use of materials and imagery that nevertheless blazed his own trail during a critical era in American art. Over a career that spanned seven decades and two continents, Donati would become known throughout his lifetime for creating groundbreaking, mixed-media paintings that referenced the natural world and the mysteries of the universe—always with a sense of wonderment and curiosity.

This exhibition includes several of Donati’s early works that were completed after is induction into the Surrealist circle of artists and writers in the 1940s. By this time, Donati had relocated from Paris to New York City as a World War II refugee, where he had become closely acquainted with the European Surrealists through the movement’s founder, André Breton, and Marcel Duchamp, who were also living in exile there. These friendships would have a profound impact on Donati’s art and his career; in 1947, his work was included in the landmark exhibition Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Maeght in Paris. Works from Donati’s early Surrealist period in this LewAllen exhibition include such enchanting, mysterious paintings as Arcimboldo (1945), Braise (c. 1940s), and Rêve tertiaire (1946), visionary works that teem with organic shapes.

The Italian-American painter's work would be 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 to 1960). Donati's remarkable work, however exemplary of both movements, always defied fitting neatly into either category.

This exhibition includes examples of key works taken from various series throughout his career, each marked with a remarkable degree of originality that permeated his paintings and challenged purist notions of art movements.

Throughout the rest of his career, Donati’s genre-defying paintings mirrored his lifelong study of science, geology, and archaeology, alluding at times to various elements of landscape, while at others to celestial, fossilized, or other ambiguous natural forms. They also displayed an inventive, provocative use of texture: 2

marking his rough, stony surfaces with cuneiform-like script and geometric symbols, Donati used materials such as ground quartz, coffee grounds, and sand to lend his canvases their fascinating, hard-won surfaces.

The results suffuse his works with the gravitas of profound age, despite their allusion to contemporary ideas toward art making.

Enrico Donati's work is represented today in major museum collections worldwide, including the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Among the great American artists of the 20th century, New York Times art critic John Gruen wrote, "Enrico Donati is that rarity, a man of his time, whose vision is timeless. A painter who, while peering into the past, intuits the future. In short, a master craftsman whose tools are the elements, and whose subject is the universe."

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Rêve tertiaire, 1946 oil on canvas 20.25 x 23.25 inches

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Arcimboldo, 1945 oil on canvas 30 x 20 inches

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Braise, c. 1940s oil on canvas 20.25 x 24.25 inches

Untitled, 1948 oil on canvas 18 x 12.25 inches

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Bapteme du bouleau, 1945 oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches

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Black and White Eclipse, 1964 mixed media on canvas 43 x 38.75 inches

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Moonscape, 1953 mixed media on canvas on canvas 12.25 x 14.25 inches

Untitled, n.d. mixed media on canvas 11.75 x 9 inches

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

Untitled, c. 1970s oil and sand on canvas 39.13 x 43.13 inches

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Birth of a Malachite, 1990 mixed media on canvas 30 x 36 inches

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

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Lagash II, 1961 mixed media on canvas 50.25 x 40 inches

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

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Embryonic III, L'amitie est une fleur, 1988 mixed media on canvas 36 x 24 inches

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Fire and Ice, 1962 mixed media on canvas 30 x 25 inches

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

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Quetzalcoatl, 1964 mixed media on canvas 19.75 x 19.75 inches

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

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

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

Ambiance, 1973 mixed media on canvas 40 x 50 inches

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

Moonscape, 1982 mixed media on canvas 39.25 x 43.25 inches

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

Split Blue, 1964 mixed media on canvas 30 x 24 inches 36

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

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

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

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

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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

1949 1947

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2022 Prima Materia, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2020 Visions of the Stone, LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM 2014 2007 2005 1997 1996 1994 1989 1987 1985 1982 1980 1979

1978

1977 1976 1966 1965 1964 1962 1961 1960 1956 1953 1952 1950

Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, CA (also '06, '07, '10) De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, Paris, France (also 2004) Boca Raton Museum of Art, Boca Raton, FL Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY (also '95) Horwitch Newman Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ (also '95) Carone Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, FL (also '84, '90, '92) Louis Newman Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA (also '86, '89, '91) Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, France Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer Gallery, New York, NY (also '86, '84) Georges Fall, Paris, France Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (also '77, '79, '80) Palm Springs Desert Museum, CA Norton Gallery of Art, West Palm Beach, FL Osuna Gallery, Washington, DC The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, IA Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN Wildenstein Art Center, Houston, TX Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago, IL Staempfli Gallery, New York, NY (also '62, '63, '66, '68, '70, '72, '74) J.L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit, MI (also '64) Obelisk Gallery, Washington, DC Hayden Gallery, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Neue Galerie im Kunstlerhaus, Munich, Germany Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, NY (also '54, '55, '57, '59) 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

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

LewAllen Galleries gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance of Rowland Weinstein and Kendy Genovese of Weinstein Gallery in making this exhibition possible.

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 | 505.988.3250 www.lewallengalleries.com | contact@lewallengalleries.com © 2022 LewAllen Contemporary, LLC Artwork © Enrico Donati