Salvatore Scarpitta

Danny Dichter, Rome

Sotheby's, London, 15 October 2007, Lot 38

Private Collection, Milan

Los Angeles, Dwan Gallery, Salvatore Scarpitta, 1961

Turin, Galleria Notizie; Brescia, Studio C, Salvatore Scarpitta, 1972, n.p., no. 11, illustrated

Bagheria, Civica Galleria Renato Guttuso di Villa Cattolica, Scarpitta, May – August 1999, p. 99, no. 59, illustrated in colour

Turin, GAM – Galleria Civica d’Art Moderna e Contemporanea, Salvatore Scarpitta, October 2012 – February 2013, p. 155, no. 33, illustrated in colour

Milan, Montrasio Arte, Joseph Beuys & Salvatore Scarpitta, Icon for a transit, February – April 2015, n.p., no. 11, illustrated in colour

'I Simboli Ottici crescono: Scarpitta', Metro, No. 3, 1961, pp. 88-89, no. 2, illustrated

Harriet Janis and Rudi Blesh, Collage. Personalities, Concepts, Techniques, Philadelphia 1962, p. 263, no. 399, illustrated

Luigi Sansone, Salvatore Scarpitta. Catalogue Raisonné, Milan 2005, p. 184, no. 308, illustrated

Exh. Cat., New York, Marianne Boeksy Gallery, Salvatore Scarpitta: Trajectory, May – June 2011, p. 43, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Text by Luigi Sansone

Executed in 1961, Salvatore Scarpitta’s Gunner's Mate is a seminal example of Salvatore Scarpitta’s X Frames. It marks an important turning point in the artist’s practice and is undoubtedly one of the most significant works of his career. Describing the eminent post-war artist in his essay for the 1964 exhibition at Galleria dell'Ariete di Milano – the original exhibition was held at Galleria La Tartaruga, Rome, in April 1958 – Gillo Dorfles stated: "In his veins, Italian blood and Slavic blood create an explosive mixture." (Gillo Dorfles in: Exh. Cat., Milan, Galleria dell’Ariete, Scarpitta, 1958-1963, 1964, n.p.) Scarpitta’s X Frames were first exhibited at the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles in June – July 1961, organized in collaboration with the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Gunner’s Mate is unique in that it is the only work from the 1961 exhibition that retained its original form; Scarpitta dismantled the other three during that period.

In 1958 the gallerist Leo Castelli, accompanied by architect Frederick Kiesler and painter Piero Dorazio, visited Scarpitta’s studio in Rome. Leo Castelli was instantly fascinated by the paintings, which featured ‘bandages’ of canvas roughly wrapped around a stretcher that had defined the artist’s practice for about a year. Scarpitta was born in New York in 1919 but had been living in Italy from 1936 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. During Castelli’s studio visit, he was able to convince Scarpitta to return to New York to exhibit at his gallery. The artist accepted the invitation and held his first solo exhibition at the Castelli Gallery in January 1959. This marked the beginning of a close collaboration and fourty-year friendship, with numerous other solo and group exhibitions to follow.

As Gillo Dorfles recalled, when Scarpitta returned to the United States, "the pictorial material he brought across the Atlantic with him consisted of overlapping and twisted shreds of monochrome canvas that formed uneven, sculptural surfaces: an artistic medium that – already then – was widely different from the pictorial abstraction prevailing in Rome and its surroundings at the time.” (Gillo Dorfles in: Ibid.)

Gunner’s mate, Scarpitta’s job title in the United States Navy and US Coast Guard, is an official designation awarded to sailors after attending special Navy training courses. The symbol of the Gunner’s mate is an X formed of the crossed canes of two rifles. Herein, the title of the present work stipulates an autobiographical component that references Scarpitta time in the US Navy during the Second World War. The work is composed of seven pieces, four elements forming a cross in the center (which constitute the base of the composition) and three smaller elements interlaced and superimposed on the top of the others forming a rectangular triptych on the right side of the composition. With their pale wooden structures, and bands of red and white fabric, which resemble many of Scarpitta’s earlier bandage works, these three superimposed elements are the defining feature of the work. It gives rise to a rhythmic encounter of geometric spaces, planes and voids that blend harmoniously into a dialogue of spiritual meanings, in which the barrier of the X and the bands represent the strength and the security of an artistic defense as intimately experienced by Scarpitta. One can say that this important work is the fundamental sum of his entire artistic production; in fact the more you look at it, the more you immerse yourself within the depth of his world, leading us to enter into a close dialogue with the artist.

As Scarpitta himself stipulated in a conversation with Carla Lonzi, "governing the space around the wall, the relief canvas was the thing, which gave birth to Minimalism, because it invaded space no longer in a pictorial sense, but in an almost architectural sense" (Salvatore Scarpitta cited in: Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto, Bari 1969, p. 90).