Lot 172: SERGIO CAMARGO (1930-1990) Relief no. 180 signed, titled, inscribed and da

SERGIO CAMARGO (1930-1990) Relief no. 180 signed, titled, inscribed and dated ‘Camargo Relief 180 Paris 67’ (on the reverse) oil on wood 9 7/8 x 9 7/8 in. (25 x 25cm.) Executed in 1967

EXHIBITED : Zurich, Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Camargo, 1968, no. 28. Please note this work is accompanied by a certifcate from the Estate. A whitewashed square, marked by rounded nodes of wood which jut out from the work’s surface, Sergio Camargo’s Relief no. 180 is an exquisitely sensuous exploration of material, light and shadow. Executed in 1967, the cylindrical chips of wood covering the work’s surface are the signature feature of Camargo’s sensitive, probing work of the 1960s, but in this relief they take on a particularly formal elegance that draws the viewer into active collaboration. Interested in the way in which his forms interact with light over the surface of the relief, Camargo ofers a ‘canvas’ whose every square centimetre alters and fuctuates; as the light surrounding the work changes, the miniature play of shadows cast by the small cylinders over the surface gradually shift, recreating the work anew. What’s more, Camargo engages the viewer in the act of creation, asking them to fnd order and pattern in the dynamic composition of light and matter, both in the relief’s juxtapositions of shadow and in the wood itself. The chips organised into perpendicular lines, the work seems to exude a subtle sense of symmetry – only when we look for the structure of this symmetry, it becomes elusive and dificult to pin down. The 1960s were a decade in which Camargo eschewed the rigidly geometric Constructivism he had espoused in the 1950s for a more sensorial style that shared afinities with the new highly textural canvases and reliefs being produced across Europe by the ‘The relief’s material structure – a dense compacted matrix suggesting the earth, the organic, the vegetable, the crystalline – becomes the means of manifesting its opposite: the immaterial, light, air, in a mysterious and beautiful unity.’

PROVENANCE: Gimpel & Hanover Galerie, Zurich. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1968