(Vienna 1925–1968 Milan)
Con un segnale, 1960, signed; signed, titled and dated on the reverse, pencil, oil and mixed media on canvas, 60.5 x 70 cm, framed

Provenance:
Sotheby’s Milan, 24 May 2006, lot 358
Galleria Zonca & Zonca, Milan
Private Collection, USA

Literature:
P. Bonani, M. Rinaldi, A. Tiddia, Gastone Novelli. Catalogo generale, 1. Pittura e Scultura, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo 2011, p. 201, no. P/1960/23 with ill.

From 1957, Novelli abandoned his previous abstract-geometric style in favour of gestural painting. Along with his contemporaries, he turned towards linguistic themes. Inspired by the art scene of the 1950s, they set aside abstract-geometric motifs to explore a more irrational and impulsive side, based on the randomness of shapes and colours.
Novelli’s research in the 1960s revolved around language and semiotics. A passionate reader of De Saussure, Novelli actively cultivated these interests. He extended Saussure’s concept of the value of arbitrariness to the semiotic system that regulates the interpretation of works of art, believing that art, like the linguistic sign, emerges from the arbitrary juxtaposition of a ‘signifier’ (form), and a ‘signified’ (concept).

Novelli explores the infinite potential of the graphic sign in his works from the 1960s. Subject to a process of incessant decomposition and recomposition, it oscillates from one semantic level to another, in a game of continuous, often interpretively challenging, linguistic experimentation. A recurrent feature in his works is the obsessive repetition of one or more letters, sometimes arranged in grids or chessboards, at other times free to flood the entire surface of the canvas or paper.

In the 1960s, Novelli took themes, signs and words from a variety of contexts and introduced them into his artistic alphabet, similarly to Duchamp’s ready-made works. The two have a common interest in linguistic games and the possibility of combining word with image.
Dadaist and Surrealist influences are evident in Novelli’s habit of transferring long sequences of words to canvas without spaces or punctuation, obliterating syntax and evoking the idea of a speech made without drawing breath. This can be seen in the work Con un segnale where a symbology of apparently random signs is mixed with linguistic play and experimentation.

Novelli’s interest in language and its application to art grew following his meeting with Achille Perilli in Rome in 1955. He would form a strong friendship with Perilli, and in 1957 they co-founded the magazine Esperienza Moderna dedicated to the expressiveness of sign, ranging from poetry to painting to oriental writing, and the interconnections between different languages. Esperienza Moderna features the writings of Maraini and Trevi as well as the works of Fontana, Kandinsky or Klee. Klee in particular was one of Novelli’s main sources of inspiration.
Klee’s influence is constant, from the abstract-geometric production of the Brazilian period to the 1960s works of letters and signs embedded in grids or in chromatic chessboards. The two artists share an experimental approach, expressive variety, a search for primitive, pure language, made of letters, numbers and signs similar to hieroglyphics, graffiti, and childish writing. Klee’s expression “The writing and the image, the writing and the figure, are fundamentally all one” encapsulates the expressive research of an artist like Novelli for whom painting is nothing other than writing with an alphabet yet to be invented.