PERILLI Achille

Achille Perilli (Rome, 1927 – Orvieto, 2021) was a central figure in postwar Italian abstraction and one of the artists who most radically challenged traditional geometry. His compositions are filled with tilted structures, impossible volumes, interlocking forms, and fields of color that seem to defy the rules of perspective. Behind the apparent visual play lies a rigorous exploration of the relationship between order and invention, rules and imagination.

Forma 1 and the defense of abstraction

In 1947, Perilli took part in founding the Forma 1 group, alongside artists including Carla Accardi, Piero Dorazio, Pietro Consagra, Giulio Turcato, and other leading figures of the new Roman generation. The manifesto championed the value of abstract art in a cultural context shaped by debate between figuration, political engagement, and experimentation. Perilli thus contributed to a period in which formal research was understood as both a cultural choice and an assertion of freedom.

His interests extended beyond painting. Magazines, theoretical debate, and collaboration with poets and intellectuals played a significant role in his career. With Gastone Novelli, he edited L’esperienza moderna and was among the founders of Grammatica, publishing ventures that attest to his interest in the relationship between image, writing, and language.

From graphic storytelling to irrational geometry

In the early stages of his research, Perilli’s surfaces feature sequences of abstract signs and forms that seem to suggest a story without recognizable characters. The composition unfolds through rhythms, intervals, and variations, almost like writing to be followed with the eyes. Later, the artist explores the construction of an imaginary space in greater depth, where geometry ceases to guarantee stability and becomes a tool for creating surprise.

From the 1970s onward, the machineries became particularly prominent: structures reminiscent of geometric solids, machines, or architecture, but with deliberately incongruous spatial relationships. Planes and edges seem to meet in ways that defy conventional perspective. The color, often vivid and contrasting, heightens this instability, while the image retains an almost technical precision.

L’imagination as a method

In the Manifesto of the Mad Image in Imaginary Space of 1971 and his subsequent reflections on geometric irrationality, Perilli asserted the possibility of constructing images that did not obey ordinary logic. This is not a rejection of discipline, but rather a deliberate use of rules to open up an unpredictable dimension. Painting thus becomes a laboratory in which visual thought can move beyond what seems possible.

Perilli also worked with stage designs, drawings, and graphic artworks. In his prints, the interplay of lines, areas of color, and overlapping hues makes the construction of his images particularly clear. Screen printing, lithography, engraving, and reproduction should not, however, be treated as interchangeable: for each work, the actual process, edition size, and any publication details should be verified.

Featured in major exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, Perilli developed a distinctive visual language marked by boldness and consistency. His artworks show that geometry is not merely a way of measuring real space: it can also become a grammar of the absurd, capable of generating images that are both precise and impossible.