Special focus: Edoardo Villa (1915 – 2011)

A short Conversation with Form and Space in Africa.

WALL presents a small selection of iconic sculptures by the Edoardo Villa representative of the artist’s development from the mid-1950s to the early 1990s. This selection is confined to the smaller, more “domestic” sized sculpture which make up a significant part of the artist’s oeuvre. The smaller items displayed provides the viewer with the opportunity to engage intimately and tactilely with Villa’s approach to combining shapes and spaces. Villa is perhaps better known for his large sculpture which can seen in almost every major city in South Africa. His larger sculptures, the commissioned works in particular, were often preceded by the production of smaller pieces or “maquette” (a scaled model produced by the sculptor for the commissioner) which most directly and intimately embody the essential sculptural thought of the artist.

Villa was undoubtedly one of South Africa’s finest sculptors. His location in Africa not only provided him with a distanced perspective on the development of European and American sculpture but more significantly provided him with the opportunity to see and experience the diversity of African artistic expression. In this small selection of works dating from 1956 to 1992 one can see the progressive development of Villa’s thinking from his early engagement with the shaping of work in a mouldable material, squeezing, rounding and shaping forms to the deliberate building, welding and combining of existing shapes into a new form. No matter how abstract the initial impression may be, the human form always seems to be present in a Villa sculpture. Although this may be a short conversation it provides the visual milestones of Villa’s 64 years as an artist in South Africa.

The Zara Court, 9am – 9pm each day