Carla Accardi

Galleria Sprovieri, Rome
Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milan
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in the late 1980s

Lausanne, Galerie L'Entracte, Carla Accardi. Peintures récentes, 1958
Darmstadt, Mathildenhöe, Forma 1 1947-1987, 1987-1988, p. 83, no. 31, illustrated
Milan, Galleria Gian Ferrari, Anni Cinquanta. Pittura Italiana dal 1949 al 1962, 1993, no. 1, illustrated

Achille Bonito Oliva, Il campo del togliere,  Acireale 1986, p. 28, no. 31, illustrated
Germano Celant, Carla Accardi, Milan 1999, p. 259, no. 1956 13, illustrated

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are minor and stable hairline cracks to the bottom right quadrant. There is a very small loss to the bottom left corner. Examination under ultra-violet light reveals retouching to the top left and bottom right corners and a few very minor scattered throughout.
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Executed in 1956, Negativo-Positivo represents a rare and significant example of Carla Accardi's iconic black and white works.  A remarkable example of the artist's signature lyrical abstraction, this painting stands as one of the earliest and largest to employ the achromatic theme perpetuated throughout Accardi's celebrated career.

 

Notable as the only female artist to have exhibited alongside Burri and Fontana in the early 1950s, Accardi courted success for her development of a unique lexicon of abstract signs.  Belonging to the generation of artists to emerge from the post-war political climate in Italy, Accardi conflated liberation from Fascism with liberation from representational art, in an exploration of form, colour and subconscious perception.  A founding member of the Forma 1 movement in 1947, Accardi experimented with calligraphic black and white forms as a means of evoking dualisms between the organic and the technological, the archaic and the new.

 

A contemporary of Piero Manzoni, whose ground-breaking Achromes were first executed in 1957, Accardi's reductive employment of black and white shortly pre-dates Manzoni's evacuation of chromatic value from the surface of the artwork.  Although similarly achromatic, where Manzoni surrenders artistic intervention, Accardi's composition is an intuitive balance between artistic decision making meditated by the nature of line, sign and symbol, cultivated in the praxis of painting.  In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Accardi describes this instinctual method: "When I made these black and white paintings, I used to begin with a drawing. I would make temperas on paper from which, slowly, there would evolve a world of signs, structures, and integrations. The signs had a kind of "return", in the sense that they would come up again changed, transformed. I would repeat them in reference to past works but there would always be something new." (Hans Ulrich Obrist, 'Carla Accardi: To Dig Deep', Flash Art, no. 260, May – June 2008).   In adopting a horizontal perspective via her refusal to conventionally paint vertically on an easel, her black and white paintings have been considered a structured response to Jackson Pollock.  Nonetheless, unlike the former, Accardi was not interested in investigating automatism and unconscious, as although greatly intuitive, the present work epitomizes the overarching formal control characteristic to the artist's organic and instinctual compositions.

 

A truly exemplary work by Accardi, Negativo-Positivo triumphs in conceiving an architecture of meditated contrasts, in which the relationship between black and white imparts an evocation of limitless amalgamation.  The playful interweaving of binary black/white tonal values bestows an outstanding equilibrium and dualism akin to the Toaist concept of yin yang.  A vibrant work of calligraphic dynamism, Accardi's painting stands out for its prescient insight and sensitive application of diverse cultural and aesthetic associations.  From an evocation of decorative textile patterns, to the tonalities of photographic reproduction, Negativo-Positivo is anchored by an organic flow of energy that would prove pivotal for the younger generation of Italian artists that were to follow.