Carla Accardi

Born in 1924 in Sicily, Carla Accardi was an Italian artist known for her contributions to formalism. In 1946, alongside the pioneers of non-figuration, she started producing paintings based on geometric abstraction and colour. The following year, in Rome, she founded the avant-garde group Forma 1, trying to align Marxist political beliefs with a formalist approach to abstraction. In the 1960s, she shifted towards experimenting with innovative materials and techniques, delving into the intricate relationships between writing and drawing, painting and sign, form and space. She continued to develop her artistic practice until her death in 2014.

During the 1960s, Accardi produced a series called Segni (Signs), in which she uses sicofoil, a transparent plastic material used in commercial packaging. They are characterised by their dynamic calligraphic marks on these translucent backgrounds, creating an interaction of light and shadows, and placing focus on the spontaneous gesture. Through the tension between the coldness of the sign, repeated in a free yet serial manner, and its poetical potential, Accardi has stretched the possibilities of abstraction and influenced subsequent generations of artists (including the Arte Povera movement).