Carla Accardi * (Trapani 1924–2014 Rome) Segni (Grande oro), 1967–76, dated, signed and titled on the reverse, varnish on sicofoil, 130 x 65 cm, in plexiglass box This work is accompanied by a photo certificate signed by the artist The work is registered in the Archivio Accardi Sanfilippo, Rome Provenance: European Private Collection Exhibited: Belgrade, Italian Abstract Perception 1910-1960, Sanu Gallery, 18 April – 31 May 2007, illustrated in the exh. brochure Literature: G. Chierici ed., Accardi 1981–1991, Il Disegno italiano, Edizioni La Scaletta, San Polo di Reggio Emilia 1994, p. 7 with b/w ill. Germano Celant, Carla Accardi, Edizioni Charta, 1999, p. 318, n. 1967–76.3 with ill. […] In the case of the use of Sicofoil and its transparency, the existance of intervening precedents is hard to identify and one might say, rather, that her wors provides a precedent. It marks, or at least shares, the anticipatory role of a dematerialization of art, which, from 1966 onwards, began to take over in international experimentation. Towards the end of 1965, Accardi was one of the first to sense the urgent need for randomness and transparency, so that the material would become flexible and move towards a condition of disappearance, of immateriality. Her Sicofoil works show traces of an attraction towards industrial mimesis, yet they remain within the sphere of painting. They set out – as in the use of latex later in 1965 by Eva Hesse and Bruce Nauman – to usher a more metaphysical abstraction onto the art scene, one that Lucy Lippard defined as eccentric, in other words, imbued with an immaterial spirit of the mind. The theme of emptiness and intervening space, which became spectacular with Minimal Art, had already been intuited by Accardi, who did not go so far as to deprive herself of surface and colour, but felt the urgency of working on the void. G. Celant, Carla Accardi. La vita delle forme, Silvana Editoriale- Zerynthia 2011 “I took pleasure in removing superimposed layers and exaggerations but above all in creating and discovering voids… I had a tendency towards minimalism from the very outset. I have always liked to simplify.” Carla Accardi