Maurizio Cattelan Untitled (Good Versus Evil). 2003

32 hand-painted, enamelled porcelain figurines, case made of wenge and walnut wood, foam and suede.. 33,5 × 59 × 59 cm (13 ¼ × 23 ¼ × 23 ¼ in.). Signed on the accompanying certificate dated 2 June 2004. One of 7 numbered examples from an edition of 7 + 4 AP.. [3212], 32 hand-painted, enamelled porcelain figurines, case made of wenge and walnut wood, foam and suede.. 33,5 × 59 × 59 cm (13 ¼ × 23 ¼ × 23 ¼ in.). Signed on the accompanying certificate dated 2 June 2004. One of 7 numbered examples from an edition of 7 + 4 AP.. [3212], Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from RS&A Ltd., London, in 2003), Private Collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from RS&A Ltd., London, in 2003), Rockers Island. Essen, Museum Folkwang, 2007 / Lebenslust & Totentanz. Krems, Kunsthalle Krems, 2010 / Carambolages. Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 2016. Good Versus Evil: How Maurizio Cattelan Brings World History to the Chessboard Thirty-two figures, two opposing sides, sixty-four squares: Maurizio Cattelan needs little more than a chessboard to bring the history of humanity together. In “Good Versus Evil”, heroes and villains from history, religion and popular culture face one another. Martin Luther King Jr. is pitted against Adolf Hitler, Saint Francis of Assisi against Dracula, Mahatma Gandhi against Al Capone. There is no hierarchy of seriousness here. Saints share the board with film monsters, peacemakers with gangsters, and it is precisely this juxtaposition of sensationalism and the abyss that defines the work. One figure refuses any clear-cut classification: Sigmund Freud plays on both sides. The figures were made by Bertozzi & Casoni, the ceramicist duo from Imola whose virtuoso illusionism has set standards since the 1980s. The precious, fragile material stands in striking contrast to its subject matter. Dictators and mass murderers appear as knick-knacks, as delicately painted display-case ornaments. The trivialisation is so blatant that it becomes a subject in its own right. Cattelan’s choice of chess pays homage to Marcel Duchamp, who famously turned away from art and towards chess in the 1920s. In 1952, Duchamp coined the observation that not all artists are chess players, but all chess players are artists. Cattelan takes this thought a step further: in his hands, chess itself becomes a readymade, a vessel for a moral drama that simultaneously subverts the game. On the chessboard, after all, morality is irrelevant. Black and white follow the same rules, their pieces move in the same way, and victory or defeat depends solely on calculation. Good has no more moves at its disposal than evil. It is this sober symmetry that constitutes the work’s true subversive force. “Good Versus Evil” brings together the qualities that have defined Cattelan’s work since the early 1990s: his gleeful dismantling of authority and power. This impulse ranges from Pope John Paul II, struck down by a meteorite in “La Nona Ora” (1999), to “Comedian” (2019), the banana duct-taped to a wall that turned the art market itself into the punchline. Cattelan is one of the few contemporary artists whose works provoke outrage far beyond the art world. When a banana sells for a six-figure sum at an art fair and later fetches several million dollars at auction, even people who have never set foot in a museum join the debate. This is one of the often overlooked achievements of his work. For Cattelan, scandal is not an end in itself, but a lure: those who take offence at his work have already found themselves confronting the questions of what art is, who gets to decide, and how far it can go. The work’s continued relevance is underscored by the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, which is currently presenting “NIGHT”, Cattelan’s first major solo exhibition in Germany, as the recipient of the 2026 Nationalgalerie Prize. The exhibition also features “Him” (2001), the kneeling, praying figure of Hitler in the guise of a young boy, created just two years before “Good Versus Evil”. The dictator reappears on the chessboard, this time as a playing piece: smaller and seemingly more incidental, yet no less disturbing for it. DvS

Stima:€100,000

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