Carla Accardi
November 18th, 2022 by ChiaraCarla Accardi was born in Trapani on 9 October 1924.
After studying art in high school, she continued her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, where she met Antonio Sanfilippo. In 1946 she moved to Rome, where the following year she signed the manifesto of the Forma 1 group, being the only woman in the group. These artists aimed to reconcile Marxist and formalist political views through abstract and realist art. Each of the participants would develop a personal language over time. Accardi’s language is characterised by a feminist vein which, through the creation of new enigmatic signs, aims to disrupt the association between delicacy and the feminine in art as well as to criticize the patriarchal tradition of the Western world.
Between November and December 1950, Accardi had her first solo show at the Age d’Or library-gallery in Rome. During those years, her artistic language was based on black and white abstract signs. At the base of Accardi’s research there is a continuous experimentation: in the 1960s she began to use coloured paints and supports such as sycofoil that lead her to the first experiments of an installation art. Examples are the well-known Tenda (1965-66) and Ambiente Arancio (1966-68). In 1964 she participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale, where she would then return for several following editions. In the 1980s, the artist returned to the canvas, using it as support for large and colourful signs. In 1994 she took part in the historical review on Italian art “The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968” at the Guggenheim in New York. In 1996 she became a member of the Brera Academy and the following year she was proclaimed advisor to the Commission for the Venice Biennale. In the early 2000s, Accardi was dedicated solo exhibitions by important Italian and foreign institutions, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2002 and the MACRO in Rome in 2004. Numerous museums have Accardi’s works in their collections, such as: Guggenheim in New York and Venice, Centre Pompidou in Paris, MAMbo in Bologna and GAM in Turin. Carla Accardi passed away in Rome on 23 February 2014.
Photo: “Gruppo Forma 1”: Pietro Consagra, Mino Guerrini, Ugo Attardi, Carla Accardi, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo e Piero Dorazio (Roma, 1947)