ACCARDI Carla

Carla Accardi (Trapani, 1924 – Rome, 2014) was one of the leading figures of Italian abstractionism in the second half of the 20th century. A founder of Gruppo Forma 1, she developed an original pictorial language built through signs, rhythms, and color relationships. From the black-and-white compositions of the 1950s to the artworks featuring intense colors, and finally her experiments with transparent materials, her practice continually challenged the traditional boundaries of painting. Carla Accardi’s artworks do not depict recognizable objects or landscapes; rather, they create an autonomous visual space in which forms seem to move and transform. Her contribution to contemporary art lies precisely in her ability to renew the abstract language without relinquishing an immediately recognizable artistic identity.

Biography and artistic training

Carla Accardi was born in Trapani on October 9, 1924. After completing her classical studies, she turned to painting and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, later continuing her training in Florence. Her youth coincided with the years of the Second World War and the difficult period of reconstruction. For many young Italian artists, the postwar period also offered an opportunity to rethink the meaning of art and its relationship with the European avant-garde. In 1946, Accardi moved to Rome with the painter Antonio Sanfilippo, whom she married in 1949. In the capital, she came into contact with artists and intellectuals interested in moving beyond traditional figurative models and creating a new visual language.

Group Forma 1 and Italian abstractionism

In 1947, Carla Accardi took part in founding the Forma 1 Group along with Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo, and Giulio Turcato. The group emerged at a particularly intense moment in Italian artistic debate, marked by a confrontation between figurative painting, often associated with social realism, and new forms of abstract research. Accardi was the only woman among the manifesto's signatories. In 1948, she participated in the Venice Biennale for the first time, beginning a relationship with one of the leading international contemporary art events. LThe experience of Forma 1 helped shape her conviction that painting could create an autonomous reality, founded on the relationships between the elements of a composition.

Carla Accardi's Marks: Painting as Language

One of the most recognizable aspects of Carla Accardi's artworks is her use of the mark. Her compositions feature forms that may recall letters, symbols, or fragments of an unknown script. Accardi's marks are not intended to communicate specific words or messages: their meaning arises from the way they are arranged on the surface, repeated, intertwined, and transformed. During the 1950s, the artist developed a style of painting characterized above all by the contrast between black and white. LThe eye follows the forms without necessarily identifying a starting point or a definitive direction. The French critic Michel Tapié took an interest in her work, helping to bring it into the international art debate.

Through the repetition and transformation of marks, the artist creates a language capable of evoking sensations of movement, balance, and instability.

Color in Carla Accardi's artworks

At the beginning of the 1960s, color once again assumed a fundamental role in Carla Accardi's artistic research. After predominantly monochromatic compositions, the artist introduced increasingly intense color combinations, profoundly changing the perception of her marks. Pink, reds, greens, blues, and other vivid hues interact through contrasts and overlaps that give the artworks new visual energy. A mark can appear light or forceful, near or far, depending on the hue surrounding it and its relationship to the other elements. Color and mark act directly on perception, inviting viewers to observe the relationships that develop within the work.

Sicofoil and Tents: Beyond the Boundaries of the Painting

One of Carla Accardi’s most important innovations was her use of Sicofoil, a transparent plastic material that the artist began using in the 1960s. In the artworks created on transparent supports, the painted marks interact with the light and with what lies behind the material. This exploration gave rise to the celebrated Tende, structures in which painted transparent surfaces are arranged in three-dimensional forms. With Tenda (1965) and Triplice Tenda (1969), Accardi moved beyond the idea of the painting as an exclusively frontal image. The Tende are among the most original moments in her work and demonstrate the artist’s ability to challenge the separation between painting, sculpture, and environment.

Carla Accardi’s artworks: paintings, works on paper, and graphic works

Carla Accardi’s artistic output includes paintings on canvas, prints, experiments on plastic supports, and graphic works. Despite the variety of techniques and materials, certain elements remain constant: the mark, rhythm, the relationship between color and surface, and the search for a dynamic balance between forms. In paintings from the 1950s, the marks cluster and intertwine, creating compositions in which the distinction between figure and background becomes uncertain. They expand, overlap, and seem to move across the surface, transforming the image into a system of chromatic relationships. The prints offer a different perspective on the artist’s visual language, in which the arrangement of marks and their relationship with empty spaces often become especially prominent.

From large canvases to compositions on paper, Carla Accardi’s work retains the ability to transform an array of abstract marks into a vivid image, in which the eye continually discovers new relationships between shapes, colors, and spaces.

Carla Accardi and feminism

Carla Accardi’s place is also important in the history of women’s emancipation and Italian feminism. In 1970, together with Carla Lonzi and Elvira Banotti, she took part in founding Rivolta Femminile, one of the most significant groups in the Italian feminist movement. Her participation arose in a cultural context in which women were demanding greater autonomy from traditional roles and dominant social structures. For Accardi, independence was also a fundamental principle in her artistic practice. From the very beginning, she had forged her own path in a predominantly male environment, gradually establishing a distinctive and independent visual language.

Recent research and international recognition

In the 1980s, Carla Accardi returned to devoting particular attention to painting on canvas, developing new compositions characterized by ever-changing signs, colors, and spatial relationships. Although she revisited elements found in her earlier works, Accardi avoided simply repeating her formal solutions. In 1988, she presented a solo gallery at the Venice Biennale, confirming the central role of her practice in the Italian art scene. Carla Accardi died in Rome on February 23, 2014. In 2024, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma dedicated a major retrospective to her on the centenary of her birth, tracing the different phases of a career characterized by continuity and experimentation.

prices and market for artworks

Carla Accardi’s artworks hold a significant place in the Italian postwar art market, thanks to the artist’s historical role and the originality of her abstract practice. Her output includes different categories, from historic paintings to prints, as well as graphic works, each with different characteristics and market values. Carla Accardi’s market prices vary according to the period, medium, dimensions, provenance, and documentation of the work. Carla Accardi’s historical significance lies above all in her contribution to profoundly renewing abstract painting, developing an independent and distinctive practice over more than sixty years.

Her artworks continue to bear witness to one of the most original movements in contemporary Italian art, in which line and color become tools for continual visual invention.