Paesaggio di molti, molti anni fa. 1986/87.
Mixed media. Watercolor, gouache, oil, silver bronze over pencil.
Titled and dated in pencil on the reverse and on the backing sheet. On a sheet from a sketchbook, right side perforated. 20.5 x 15 cm (8 x 5.9 in), the full sheet.
The Barcode of Life - The Hans Braun Collection
More works from the collection are offered in our Contemporary Art Day Sale on Saturday, December 7, 2024.

• Abstraction in the artist's typical whimsical and colorful expression.
• The work is part of a group inspired by childhood memories that de Maria began in the 1980s.
• Nicola de Maria's works have featured in the Venice Biennale three times and at documenta 7 in Kassel.
• Works by the artist are in the collections of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin and the Stedelijk Museum in
Amsterdam.

PROVENANCE: Hans Braun Collection, Baden-Württemberg (since 1993, Grisebach).

LITERATURE: Villa Grisebach Auktionen, Berlin, 35th auction, Art of the 19th and 20th Century, November 22, 1993, lot 322 (ill.).

"For Nicola de Maria [..], color – equal to the drawing – seems born of a moment of intuition, of the immense feeling of being the world's contemporary. And it is this very feeling that always makes his work immensely far removed from that which seems to have provoked them. This alone can explain his titles – contradictory only on the surface – because they contain, in terms of the work, the equivalence of the present moment and the world."
Jean-Christophe Ammann, 1983, quoted from: Nicola de Maria. Liberta' segreta segreta, Basel 1983, p. 44.

In very good condition, mounted on a backing sheet signed on its reverse.