Piero Manzoni

Heiner and Rosemarie Ruths, Weissenhorn
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1968

Wuppertal, Kunst-und Museumverein Wuppertal, Hommage à Fontana, September - November 1969, cat. no. 67
Krefeld, Museum Haus Lange, Wendepunkt: Kunst in Europa um 1960, May - July 1980, cat. no. 46, p. 62, illustrated
Krefeld, Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Sammlung Helga und Walther Lauffs - Amerikanische und europäische Kunst der sechziger und siebziger Jahre, November 1983 - April 1984, cat. no. 228, p. 50, illustrated

Freddy Battino & Luca Palazzoli, Piero Manzoni Catalogue Raisonné, Milan, 1991, cat. no. 468 BM, p. 303, illustrated
Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Vol. II, Milan, 2004, cat. no. 324, p. 443, illustrated

This painting is in very good condition for a work of this series, particularly in light of its size. The canvas has a thin strip wood frame, painted white, which is in turn mounted to a wood board, painted white, under a Plexiglas box frame. Please contact the Contemporary Art Department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Terrence Mahon.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Manzoni's Achrome is a landmark expression of painting as purity. Preceding Minimalism, Conceptualism and Arte Povera, Achrome achieves its primal condition as 'object' by intentionally denouncing any and all external intrusions. Manzoni rejected figuration and narrative painting which was predominant in Western Art from the Renaissance through to the 19^th century. Best understood as a pure signifier, Manzoni's Achrome operates as a self-referential, fully contained entity that reaches its final state without biographical or cultural interventions. Its materiality, while manipulated, is not the result of layers of impasto but of an autonomy granted by the creative process itself; a physical feature of liquid kaolin and glue left to dry.

As a 'virgin' space, the goal of the achrome is: "to render a surface completely white (integrally colorless and neutral) far beyond any pictorial phenomenon or any intervention by the artist. A white that is not a polar landscape, not a material in evolution or a beautiful material, not a sensation or a symbol or anything else, just a white surface that is simply a white surface and nothing else. Better than that: a surface that simply is: (to be complete and become pure)." (Piero Manzoni in 1960 as cited in Exh. Cat., London, Tate Gallery, Piero Manzoni: Paintings, reliefs and objects, 1974, p. 46-47) Diametrically opposed to Action Painting with its emphasis on painterly gesture and the artist's subconscious, Achrome endures as a model of symmetry and simplicity. Manzoni pleated the canvas surface, then coated it with kaolin, and it is the drying process that determined the final form of the work of art.  Ultimately, the achromes' fluid unfolding and refolding of creases in repeated cascading patterns brings Manzoni closer than any of his contemporaries to achieving an organic sensibility.

Executed in 1958, by a then twenty-five year old, Achrome belongs to the first group of kaolin works where a mature density replaces tentative experimental folds. On its fiftieth anniversary, Achrome continues to exude absolute conceptual purity.