Antonio Asis: Chromatic Compositions
February 15 - March 31, 2022
Antonio Asis: Chromatic Compositions
ANTONIO ASIS [1932, Argentina - 2019, France]
Antonio Asis was born in Buenos Aires and began studying art at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes at the age of fourteen, where he explored abstraction and non-representational art. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Buenos Aires was an important site for the development of post-war abstraction, and Asis was an active member of its creative community. In 1956, he moved to Paris at the age of twenty-four, where he met and married Lydwine D'Andigné and established his studio where he would work for the next sixty-three years.
In Paris, Asis joined an international circuit of artists exploring kinetic and optical or "op" art, including Yaacov Agam, Jesús Rafael Soto, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely, among others. Surrounded by this dynamic milieu, Asis began a series of work in which he considered how the phenomenon of light could be mediated through photography. He soon began to work primarily in gouache and acrylic painting, studying the perceptual effects achieved through composition and the juxtaposition of color. As Jesús Rafael Soto noted, "Antonio Asis is one of the most authentic artists of the optical kinetic art movement. His research on the vibration and the dematerialization of the surface situate him as a pioneer of the new generation."
"Antonio Asis is one of the most authentic artists of the optical kinetic art movement. His research on the vibration and the dematerialization of the surface situate him as a pioneer of the new generation."
- Jesús Rafael Soto
Untitled from the series Cercles Concentriques, 2011.
Gouache on cardboard
7 7/16 x 7 7/16 in. / Framed: 15 x 15 x 1 5/8 in.
$7,500
Untitled, 1954
Painting on cardboard
3 1/8 x 4 5/8 in. / Framed: 18 7/8 x 14 13/16 x 1 1/2 in.
$12,000
Untitled from the series Chromatisme Quadrillé Polychrome No 334, 1960
Gouache on paper, 8 1/4 x 11 11/16 in.
Framed: 17 x 17 x 1 9/16 in.
$9,500
Untitled from the series Chromatisme Quadrillé Polychrome, 1966
Gouache on paper
11 3/8 x 8 1/4 in. / Framed: 17 x 17 x 1 9/16 in.
$9,500
Untitled from the series Chromatisme Quadrillé Polychrome, 1965
Gouache on paper
11 3/8 x 8 1/4 in. / Framed: 17 x 17 x 1 9/16 in.
$9,500
Untitled from the series Cercles Concentriques, 1960
Gouache on cardboard
6.5 x 7 in.
$7,500
Untitled from the series Cercles Concentriques, 2003
Gouache on cardboard
7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.
$7,500
Untitled from the series Cercles Concentriques, 2011
Gouache on cardboard
7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in.
$7,500
"The idea which guided Asis at the beginning is typical of the generation of artists to which he belongs: abstraction seemed to be the requirement of modernity, but the need to develop its language, to break the yoke of the fixed, unchanging form, was even stronger, born of a different intuition about the structure of the universe that the work should reflect, and the deep-seated conviction that old abstraction was no longer capable of this."
- Arnauld Pierre
Untitled from the series Labyrinthe Polychrome, 1985
Acrylic on wood
19 5/8 x 19 5/8 in.
$12,000
Untitled (blue, yellow, light purple), 1974
Gouache on cardboard
26 3/8 x 26 3/8 in.
$20,000
Cerchi ritmici No 2431, 1990
Acrylic on cardboard
28 5/16 x 28 5/16 in.
Framed: 32 1/2 x 32 1/8 in.
$20,000
Selected Public Collections
Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Miami, FL, USA
Collection Jean et Colette Cherqui, Paris, France
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Latinoamericano (MACLA), La Plata, Argentina
Museo de Arte Moderno de Caracas, Caracas, Venezuela
Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto, Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela
Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA), Santiago, Chile
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Museo Nacional de Nicaragua, Managua, Nicaragua
Museo Nacional Tres de Febrero (MUNTREF), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), Houston, TX, USA