We are participating in the section Spotlight, with a solo booth presentation on the early works by Carla Accardi.
We are located at booth SP13.
Carla Accardi, Labirinto Negativo, 1954, Caseina on canvas, 57.5×76 cm
Partners & Mucciaccia presents Carla Accardi (1924-2014), one of the protagonists of Italian art since the late 1940s. Her work, ranging from painting to installation, focuses on the interaction between sign, surface, light and color.
“Life is not always easy or beautiful. Only in knowing the night do I know the day, and only in knowing cold do I know heat. I express these contrasts in my painting by superimposing black on white, or by placing a circle next to a contrasting shape. …I simply paint a symbolic portrait of life as I see it, with its struggles, its joys, its miseries and its defeats…”
(Accardi in conversation with H. Lester Cooke, 1955).
In the 1950s, Accardi produces a series of bichrome works, characteristic of her positive/negative series, resulting in her black and white paintings. She creates a sign and repeats it over and over again, a sense of continuity, creating a remarkably familiar calligraphy.
In the 1960s, vibrant colors are introduced in her palette. The relationship between sign and color determines the role of motion and spatial function. Influenced by her interest in film and advertising, she begins using fluorescent colors as a way to embrace the social, rather than as a reference to consumer products, like for many of her fellow Pop artists.
Carla Accardi (born in 1924 in Trapani, Italy; dies in 2014 in Rome, Italy) since the mid 1950s is recognised as a highly respected artist and as one of the protagonist of the art scene of her time. She is invited numerous times to Venice Biennale (1948, 1964, 1976, 1978, 1988 (a solo room) and 1993) as well as takes part in group and solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Accardi founds Forma 1 art group in 1947, together with her future husband, Antonio Sanfilippo, and Turcato, Attardi, Perilli, Dorazio and Guerrini. The Group considers the geometric lines as pure form toward abstraction and formalism, rejecting any link of continuity with the Italian painting of the last twenty years. After the group Forma 1 breaks-up in 1951, Accardi continues her abstract, but concrete research. From 1953 Accardi’s research begins to focus on the poetics of the sign, although still often centred around an idea of “figure”, imagined in mainly black, ochre and earth tonalities. From 1954 she develops her black and white paintings – the Negativi series. The 1960s bring significant stylistic changes. In 1961, Accardi reintroduces colors in her compositions, obtaining also optical effects. Color reappears with much more vibrant tonalities, and the sign changed structure. The first intensely chromatic works are exhibited in 1961 at the Parma Gallery in New York and the New Vision Centre Gallery in London.
We are pleased to be featuring at Frieze New York 2018 her iconic paintings from her Negativi series through to her color compositions, to trace her artistic evolution, bringing together also works that have been shown in ground-breaking exhibitions held in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Frieze New York 2018, situated at Randall’s Island Park, will host for the first time two preview days, with the VIP opening on Wednesday 2 and Thursday May 3.
Opening Days:
Preview, Wednesday May 2
Preview, Thursday May 3
Open to the public: From Friday May 4 through to Sunday May 6.
https://frieze.com/gallery/partners-mucciaccia
Frieze, New York, 2 – 6 May, 2018
