Couleur Lumière (Colour Light)

Christie’s is delighted to present a selection of jewel-like works from the Degola collection. Carlo Degola, a lawyer from Genoa, and his wife, Enrichetta Gennaro, developed their passion for art through their close friendship with the art dealer Rinaldo Rotta. Inheriting the gallery of his father Roberto, Rotta was an important figure in the Italian post-war art milieu who introduced international art movements, such as CoBrA, to Genovese collectors and supported local artistic production and expression. Degola spent many hours in Rotta’s company, initially learning about art and eventually building his own collection. He was particularly fascinated by small-scale works and lived among them in his elegant Genovese apartment. The collection stands as a testament to his uncompromising eye for colour and form, as well as his love for European and Latin American post-war art.

Highlights of the present selection include works by artists from the collector’s native Italy. Corsi speciali, 1957, is an early example of Mimmo Rotella’s groundbreaking ‘décollage’ works: layered sheets of torn advertising posters, which expand upon Cubist and Dadaist principles. Giuseppe Capogrossi’s Superficie 433, 1961, stems from the artist’s career-defining homonymous series, whose abstract comb-shaped signs positioned him within the ranks of Italian Art Informel. Other works showcase developments across Europe: from the lyrical abstraction of Swiss artist Gérard Ernest Schneider, to the raw painterly visions of Karel Appel and Enrico Baj – both associated with CoBrA – to the Op Art of Victor Vasarely and the paintings by Julio Le Parc and Horacio Garcia Rossi, founding members of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel in Paris.