¤ ALBERTO MAGNELLI (1888-1971) ARDOISE, 1940 Gouache on slate Signed and dated '[19]40' upper right Signed and dedicated 'À mes chers/Suzanne et George [sic]/Avec mon amitié/Souvenir' on the back of the frame Gouache on slate; signed and dated upper right; signed again and dedicated on the back of the frame 25,8 X 17,8 CM - 10 1/8 X 7 IN. PROVENANCE Collection Georges et Suzanne Ramié, Vallauris. Then by descent. "Between the drawing, the freer practice of collage and the definitive realization of his canvases, the Slates have the value of a particular lesson in a period of structural evolution for the painter and in a time of collective upheaval. We note that the period produced similar works, other suites and ensembles which are also, with different options and modes of expression, concentrates of plastic emotion with the value of a spiritual testament when everything in the world can collapse. [...] But, for Magnelli, this medium had other than Franciscan virtues. The school slate immediately provided the painter with an absolute abstraction of the painting, background, material, color and frame. He liked the way it was held in his hand, its mineral density, its mattness, its grain, the black monochrome or squared with dark red of its surface. All these elements were part of the elaboration process and always had to be kept in one way or another in the final composition. The raw wood of the frame, the pattern of its veins, the rounded angle corresponded to the taste for natural materials so frequent in this current of concrete art in which he was situated. [...] The painter used to keep these slates on shelves, like the precious incunabula of an invented language. All the art of his maturity, imposing, spiritual and serious, elliptical and peremptory, finds its first formulation here. The prehistory of a world in the process of blossoming, like those schist palettes from the fourth millennium which are at the origin of the classical Egyptian bas-relief, but also a constant confrontation, the reference where he can verify the plastic capacity of his intuitions in order to then give them another dimension, to take new paths." Germain Viatte, "Talismans du voyage", in Magnelli, Éditions du Centre Pompidou, Paris: 1989, pp. 147-151.