Antonio SEGUI (1934-2022)

Lot 166
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Estimation :
8000 - 12000 EUR
Antonio SEGUI (1934-2022)
The Elephant, 1973 Mixed media on linen Signed and dated lower center 128 x 128 cm Indexed in the Antonio Seguí Archives as no. 1973-020 Provenance: - acquired in 2000 from the Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris - private collection, Paris During the 1970s, the artist declined, by means of several techniques and in colors ranging from grays to pastels, the motif of the elephant. The staging of the animal in imaginary landscapes ranging from the pampas to almost surrealist reconstructed places give a strange tone to this series. In most of them, one or more characters are associated with the animal, often in total contrast: here an elegant couple, from the 1900s, contemplating with interest an elephant, probably in a zoo. The black and white image is reminiscent of the souvenir postcards of the Paris Museum of Natural History. The animal, very hungry, is hard to see. What is the message delivered by the artist? It's hard to say because Seguí has never really explained his mysterious series: "The image is deceptive. We are in a formal research and this motif, like another, allows Seguí to work on painting, colors, perspective," tries to analyze the art historian Daniel Abadie (C. Rigollet, "Seguí, la peinture en miroirs", L'Agora des Arts, February 2016). Perhaps we can give another coloring to this research by evoking Seguí as a passionate collector? Indeed, after meeting Jacques Kerchache, a dealer in primitive arts, the artist collected Nigerian statues and Bamiléké elephant masks from Cameroon: "My chosen fields are pre-Columbian and African civilizations. It is precisely this pictorial side and often this fantasy that seduce me, for example in the elephant masks" (Interview with Antonio Seguí, Bleecker Street 1- 2 (Abordages - Masques et Figures), published by Dumerchez, 2004). The Argentine artist left us in February 2022, keeping a part of his mystery...
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