Carla Accardi (Trapani 1924-Roma 2014)

One of the first Italian women to devote herself to abstractionism, she freuenta the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Palermo, where she met Antonio Sanflippo, her future husband, in 1944. She moved in 1946 to Rome, where the following year she founded the Forma 1 group inisieme with Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo and Giulio Turcato. For the latter, art must be devoid of allegorical or psychological meanings, so in their works they return to giving form and sign their essential meaning. In 1950 he has his first solo shows, at the Galleria Numero in Florence and at the Libreria l'Age d'Or in Rome. In the works of '53 there is a change in the research based on the poetics of the sign, which pursues an idea of 'figure', imagined in colors mostly collected on earth tones, to develop then, in the following years, in sets of segments articulated in the dry alternation of black and white, to which red will be added. The 1960s record significant stylistic changes. Much more vivid and varied color tones reappear, while the sign changes structure. These years see the birth of the first works made on sicofoil, a transparent plastic material used for the first time in art. In the 1980s she returned to canvas, which was often left raw, animated by colored marks that had now become very large, within which color could be even one. The artist was part of the Italian feminist movements, giving life, together with Elvira Banotti and Carla Lonzi, to the group "Rivolta femminile." Late in life, the painter received some appointments: she was, in fact, part of the Brera Academy in 1996 and entered the Venice Biennale Commission in 1997.