Lot 97: Toni Fabris, Comparison, 1980, Bronze, with dark

Toni Fabris, Comparison, 1980, Bronze, with dark brown patina, 128cm.; 50ins high by 78cm.; 31ins wide, This piece was acquired by the Walter Fontana collection in 1974 and is sold with original photos including one certified by the sculptor's son Luigi Fabris 21/2/2012, Toni Fabris was born on the 10 May 1915 at Bassano Del Grappa. He studied at the Liceo Artistico and the Accademia di Brera in Milan under Francesco Messina. After the war, in which he was taken prisoner, he held a one-man show at the Galleria dell'Illustrazione Italiana, in Milan. In the following years he returned to his experiments in sculpture begun in 1937. In 1962 he held his second one-man show at the Galleria Minima Toninelli, followed in 1963 with an exhibition at the Galeria D'Eendt in Amsterdam, who also sponsored him at the Salon International des Galeries Pilots, at the Museo Cantonale of Lausanne in 1963. In 1965, together with four other Italian artists, he was invited to show at the Kunstmuseum in Winterthur. In 1966 he was invited to show a group of his works at the 33rd Venice Biennial. In the same year, he was invited with five other Italian artists to exhibit at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia at Verona. All of the Fabris pieces in this sale were made in the 1970's and show a progression from his earlier more zoomorphic style of High voltage tension fits into a very specific period of Fabri's development at the end of the 1950's where his work such as the zoomorphic filaments of 'Freed Surface' of 1959 reminiscent of the wooly skeins of strange exotic plants evolved into a more angular approach as in Vertical Structure of 1960 and then the present piece which given it's massive scale combines elements of the manmade with nature in the form of a giant cactus. The majority of Fabris's pieces are under a metre in height. Literature: , Toni Fabris: Sculpture from 1959-1967 by Agnoldomenica Pica, Edizioni del Milione, 1968.,