CARLA ACCARDI AT GALLERIES MASSIMO E FRANCESCA MININI

CARLA ACCARDI

Opening September 18, 2018

Until November 10, 2018

The gallery has insisted I write a press release for Carla Accardi.

Two exhibitions in two spaces, mine in Brescia and Francesca's in Milan, for a single project.

I gave it a few tries, before realizing that Carla simply doesn’t need a press release.

Everybody already knows who she was, and, frankly, I wouldn’t have anything to add to what is already common knowledge.

As a painter she was resolute and as person kind, yet never shy.

She always stood her ground; she did not hesitate to leave Trapani for Rome when she understood that the capital would offer better opportunities for carrying on her work.

She kept a very high standard for her beautiful painting right up to the end, even managing to surpass her companions from the Forma group.

Both for her work and as a figure, Carla acted as a link between her generation and those that followed, thanks to the interest of her painting and to her personal openness and approachability.

Young in her approach and style, her work has become emblematic of an era, a bridge that from the post-war period leads right to the #arte Povera and Conceptual Art movements, a world that has embraced her work with great respect and attention. Carla is the queen of Italian art.

Born in Trapani in 1924, she studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti of Palermo and Florence before moving to Rome with fellow artist Antonio Sanfilippo, whom she married in 1949. In the capital city, she was a frequent visitor to Pietro Consagra's studio, where she met Attardi, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli, Turcato; together with these artists and Sanfilippo, she established the Forma Group in 1947, thus consolidating her vocation for abstract painting. The artist's work moved towards automatism: at first, she reduced her palette to white, black and red, but then used increasingly strong colours, sometimes fluorescent and contrasting; from 1965 onwards, she continued her exploration of cylinders and cones made of a transparent plastic material called Sicofoil, later used as coating for monochrome canvases or wrapped around bare frames. Active for over fifty years, she died in Rome in 2014. The exhibitions at Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia and Francesca Minini in Milan present works from the artist's private collection, courtesy of the Accardi Sanfilippo Archive in Rome.

GALLERIA MASSIMO MININI

Via Apollonio 68 – 25128 Brescia tel. 030383034 info@galleriaminini.it www.galleriaminini.it