Guiseppe CATTANEO (1929 – 2015)
Abstract Cape Dutch Gable
1986
lithograph
edition 58/100
size unknown
Ancestral Tree
1995
watercolour on paper
49 x 33 cm
Mandela’s Stamp
1995
watercolour on paper
52 x 35 cm
The Bird
1971
lithograph
edition 11/75
50 x 55 cm
The Dove
1971
lithograph
edition 11/75
50 x 38 cm
This lithograph was based on an actual experience. A dove had been struck by a motor car. The artist attempted to rescue it but it died in his hand. In this lithograph, he specifically wanted to symbolise the ascent of the bird’s soul. On the top is an upward ascending symbolic white cloud, rendered as a series of fluttering birds.
The bird is magnified to make explicable its largeness in relation to that of the landscape. At the same time it magnifies the situation. The artist explains: ‘You magnify yourself when you are lonely, and you are magnified by the external world. The bird is cold, isolated, miserable, and in solitude – it is me.’
SOURCE
Doepel, R.T. 1977. Giuseppe Cattaneo – Retrospective Exhibition. Gertrude Posel Gallery, Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 16.
The Hill
1971
lithograph
edition 11/75
50 x 55 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Italy, Guiseppe Cattaneo was a South African Postwar and Contemporary artist, who lived in Johannesburg. He was an influential lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand and was part of the Amadlozi Group alongside Sydney Kumalo, Ezrom Legae, Cecily Sash, Cecil Skotnes and Edoardo Villa. The group exhibited with art dealer Egon Guenther’s gallery, Linksfield, in Johannesburg during the 1950s and 1960s and then with Goodman Gallery from the late 1960s.
Exhibited: SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch, Abstract South African Art Revisited, 9 June to 1 September 2011.
Literature: Berman, E. (1970). Art & Artists of South Africa. (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema), illustrated on page 62.