Italian born Enrico Donati, one of the last great American Surrealist painters, had a long fascination with surface and texture that included mixing his paint with sand, dust, coffee grounds and, at times, the contents of his vacuum cleaner, which he mixed with pigment and glue and slathered on his canvas. Bearing strong similarities in stylistic preferences to the work of Bernard Dubuffet, Donati was an integral part of the mélange of expatriate and American artists at the center of the post war New York art scene, having been introduced by the writer and "Father of Surrealism" André Breton to the likes of Ashile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and the American sculptor Alexander Calder. Duchamp became a particular friend of Donati. They collaborated on various projects, including the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme at the Maeght Gallery in Paris in 1947. They devised the exposition's program, decorating the cover of each copy with a foam rubber breast. Donati continued to transform his work throughout the course of his six decades long career. Donati would go on to embrace the Abstract Expressionist movement and exhibited with such major figures of the New York School as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
Mesmerized by a round smooth stone (later to be determined a fossil by Yves Tanguay) found on the Dover Beach in 1950, Donati was seemingly and inwardly led to begin a number of works referred to as his “Fossil Series” of which our Astral Blue is one. The fossil found inside the stone would prove oddly enough to resemble the very personal imagery Donati had been painting out of his subconscious. Donati explained:
I was in touch with the cycle of creation, destruction, and rebirth.
Donati began in the 1960’s to create these canvases with two or three richly colored, sand-textured geometric forms that were sometimes incised and which often contained what appeared to be fossil fragments. He would exhibit them to critical acclaim at the Staempli Gallery in New York City. Our canvas in particular appears almost to be ancient in origin. Its ravishing color and rich sensuous surface features make it a compelling work. Its further success is due to the remarkable fusion of color and texture that is tantalizing, physically real, and alive coloristically. Nothing before this Fossil had ever been so simply conceived for Donati and yet nothing had been more representative of what this artist wanted to say in the most effective way possible that still left these works so open to limitless possibilities.
Italian born Enrico Donati, one of the last great American Surrealist painters, had a long fascination with surface and texture that included mixing his paint with sand, dust, coffee grounds and, at times, the contents of his vacuum cleaner, which he mixed with pigment and glue and slathered on his canvas. Bearing strong similarities in stylistic preferences to the work of Bernard Dubuffet, Donati was an integral part of the mélange of expatriate and American artists at the center of the post war New York art scene, having been introduced by the writer and “Father of Surrealism” André Breton to the likes of Ashile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, Giorgio de Chirico, Fernand Léger and the American sculptor Alexander Calder. Duchamp became a particular friend of Donati. They collaborated on various projects, including the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme at the Maeght Gallery in Paris in 1947. They devised the exposition’s program, decorating the cover of each copy with a foam rubber breast. Donati continued to transform his work throughout the course of his six decades long career. Donati would go on to embrace the Abstract Expressionist movement and exhibited with such major figures of the New York School as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.
Staempli Gallery, New York
Private Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ford
Stefek Auctioneers and Appraisers, December 4, 2014, Lot 83
2007, The Surreal World of Enrico Donati, de Young Museum, San Francisco
2006, Weinstein Gallery, San Francisco, California (Retrospective: 130 Selected works from the Artist's Personal Collection 1942 - 2001)
2004, 2005 Gallerie Les yeux fertiles, Paris
2000-04 Galerie Yoramgil, West Hollywood, California
1998 Galerie Yoramgil, West Hollywood, California (retrospective)
1997 Boca Raton Museum (retrospective)
1995-97 Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York
1995-97 Horwitch Gallery, Scottsdale
1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993 Louis Newman Galleries, Beverly Hills
1989 Galerie Zabriskie, Paris
1987 Zabriskie Gallery, New York
1985 Georges Fall, Paris
1994, 1990 Carone Gallery, Fort Lauderdale
1984, 1986, 1987 Gimpel & Weitzenhoffer, New York·1980 Grand Palais, FIAC, Paris
1980 Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs
1979 Osuna Gallery, Washington D.C.
1979 Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
1950 Galleria del Milione, Milan·1950 Obelisco, Rome
1950 Paul Rosenberg Gallery, New York
1947 Galerie Drouant Gallery, Paris
1947, 1958 Syracuse University, New York
1945-47, 1949 Durand Ruel, New York
1944, 1959 Chicago Arts Club, Chicago
1944 G. Place Gallery, Washington D.C.
1942, 1944 Passedoit Gallery, New York
1979 Norton Gallery, Palm Beach
1978 Wildenstien Art Center, Houston
1978 Davenport Municipal Art Gallery, Iowa
1978 Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga
1977 Fairweather Hardin Gallery, Chicago
1977 Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Nashville
1977 Chrysler Museum, Norfolk
1977, 1979, 1982 Ankrum Gallery, Los Angeles
1977 Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul
1965 Obelisk Gallery, Washington D.C.
1964 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
1964, 1966 J.L. Hudson Gallery, Detroit
1962, 1963, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1980, 1982 Staempfli Gallery, New York
1962 Neue Gallery, Munich
1961 Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
1954, 1955, 1957, 1959, 1960 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York
1953 Naviglio, Milan
1952, 1953 Cavallino, Venice
1952 Alexander Iolas Galery, New York