Arciere su bianco, 1955

Carla Accardi was raised in Sicily, embracing, as she recalls, the light, the Mediterranean colors, the frontier spirit, and the memory of ancient civilizations that characterize the region. In the immediate postwar period she moved to Rome, where she participated in the climate of renewal, passionately involved in the artistic debate then taking place. In 1947, she was the only woman artist among a group of young artists to sign the Forma manifesto. Openly anti-realist in their polemics, this group promoted abstract painting, ideally reconnecting to the European avant-garde tendencies of the first half of the century. Accardi immediately stood out in the way she broke away from the rigors of geometry. [...]