Dadamaino (Eduarda Maino) *

(Milan 1930–2004) “Volume”, on the stretcher titled, signed, dated Dadamaino 59, waterpaint on canvas with 2 openings made by the artist, 60 x 40 cm, in plexiglas box, (PP)

Photo certificate:
Archivio Dadamaino, Milan, 4 May 2011, no. 064/11

Provenance:
Galleria Toselli, Milan;
Private Collection, Europe

Dadamaino’s search for artistic renewal comes from her experience of Dadaism and the analytic questioning of traditional art forms. Towards the end of the 1950s, the Italian worked with raw or black or white painted canvases in which she cut large, oval openings. The work here from 1959, “Volume”, is a canvas painted in white waterpaint with two large holes, one oval, the other almost rectangular in form. This slicing into the medium is reminiscent of the technique of Lucio Fontana. Here, however, the size of the cuts, which take up almost the entire canvas, effectively incorporate the wall upon which the work is hung, rendering it an active element of the work itself. (Exhibition catalogue Italienische Kunst 1900-1980, Milan, 1985, page 152)

Specialist: Mag. Patricia Pálffy