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Lot Essay
Created circa 1959, Achrome is a majestic and large-scale example of Piero Manzoni's most celebrated series of work. Having formed part of the present collection since 1971, this is the first time this radiant painting has been on public view for more than forty years. Dating from the most fertile period of his short career, other examples of the present work are currently housed in major international museum collections including Museum Ludwig, Vienna, Tate Modern, London, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main and Herning Art Museum, Denmark. Brilliant in virginal white, Achrome brings together a delicate assembly of twenty squares of canvas soaked in kaolin, arranged in a perfectly rational geometric configuration. In Achrome, the artist's conceptually rigourous approach finds a striking contrast with its organic yet elegant surface effect. Each individual surface bears soft undulating ripples; the sensuous folds flowing in undetermined directions through the random and autonomous drying process engendered by the artist. With its clean and unmediated aesthetic, the work radiates a raw energy, an unconscious beauty. Recalling the formal simplicity of Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, Achrome seeks through a process of simplification and purification to 'abolish the symbolic, psychological and expressive intent of art' (G. Celant, 'Manzoni and his Times', Piero Manzoni: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 12). Railing against the Art Informel prevalent in Europe during the 1950s, Manzoni and his contemporaries Alberto Burri, Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana, were attempting to move beyond painting and conventional artistic techniques. This pioneering ambition paralleled the contemporary zeitgeist, with its promise of scientific progress at the beginning of the Cold War space race. It also gave rise to an entirely new and radical artistic vernacular, which was to provide inspiration for generations of artists to come, from Minimalism to Conceptualism.
Manzoni's practice grew out of the prevailing artistic trends of the time including the Movimento Arte Nucleare and Spazialismo. Emerging in the immediate post-War period, these movements represented a means of superseding the prevalent expressive style and existential themes of Art Informel and aimed to forge a breakthrough in artistic techniques. This idea of a new way forward in art resonated with the contemporary zeitgeist; society being confronted with a future full of constructive and devastating potential as a result of the Cold War space race. As Anna Costantini has observed, 'artists felt able to start again from a post-nuclear degree zero, a sort of tabula rasa that could comprise new worlds, from the microscopic to the interplanetary' (A. Costantini, 'From Zero to Nothing. Comparing Piero Manzoni', G. Celant (ed.), Piero Manzoni, exh. cat., Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, 2007, p. 60).
In creating the densely white Achrome, Manzoni was clearly moving away from figuration and the expressive brushstroke. In a critical and mocking review of other artistic methods, Manzoni said: 'I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms... the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced' (P. Manzoni quoted in 'Free Dimension', Azimuth, no. 2, Milan 1960). For Manzoni, the onus was on the artist to create a 'virgin space', where the canvas could no longer be subordinated to image and external stimulus. The painting should abandon mimetic value in favour of its materials whether kaolin, cotton, fibreglass or styrofoam. The medium itself was to become the work, the new totem. In this respect, Manzoni was echoing the American Jasper Johns whose iconic White Flag (1955) drained all colour from the United States standard, drawing the viewer's attention away from the familiarity of the object towards the nature of its waxed materials.
In January 1957, Manzoni interacted with Yves Klein and Alberto Burri who were both exhibiting their works in Milan. The approach of these artists had a profound impact on Manzoni. Achrome clearly pays a visual debt to Alberto Burri's material works created out of burlap bags, velvet and old shirts as in his Due camicie (1957), and also to Yves Klein's exploration of the dazzling blue monochrome in his Proposte Monochrome: Epoca blu launched at the Galleria Apollinaire. Whilst Manzoni followed the artists' innovations with interest, his Achrome, with its raw physicality and absence of colour, can perhaps be regarded as the apogee of such investigations. For Manzoni, the materiality of the painting was central to the work. Instead of the smooth monochrome, Achrome appears tectonic, the uneven surface of the canvas, split into a grid-like arrangement of squares born out of the cooling, hardening and crystallising process of kaolin on canvas.
This attempt to supersede painting created a fundamental impact on the contemporary artistic milieu. Indeed it has become a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists including those united under Conceptualism, Minimalism and Arte Povera. Following an exhibition Manzoni shared with Italian artist Lucio Fontana in 1958, he confidently asserted: 'I am a kind of symbol of the union of the three initiators of the three avant-garde movements in Milan' (P. Manzoni quoted in M. Gale & R. Miracco (eds.), Beyond Painting: Burri, Fontana, Manzoni, Milan 2005, p. 108). Unlike Fontana however, Manzoni fundamentally eschewed the traces of his own presence in the painting. As Germano Celant has observed, 'he does not place himself on or in front of the picture, like Pollock and Fontana, but behind and to one side, almost as if he wishes to draw attention to a parallel flow where for his vision the 'visceral' product, dear to the exponents of Art Informel, can now be provided by the 'painting', that comes into existence by itself' (G. Celant, 'Manzoni and his Times', Piero Manzoni: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 48).
Manzoni's practice grew out of the prevailing artistic trends of the time including the Movimento Arte Nucleare and Spazialismo. Emerging in the immediate post-War period, these movements represented a means of superseding the prevalent expressive style and existential themes of Art Informel and aimed to forge a breakthrough in artistic techniques. This idea of a new way forward in art resonated with the contemporary zeitgeist; society being confronted with a future full of constructive and devastating potential as a result of the Cold War space race. As Anna Costantini has observed, 'artists felt able to start again from a post-nuclear degree zero, a sort of tabula rasa that could comprise new worlds, from the microscopic to the interplanetary' (A. Costantini, 'From Zero to Nothing. Comparing Piero Manzoni', G. Celant (ed.), Piero Manzoni, exh. cat., Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, 2007, p. 60).
In creating the densely white Achrome, Manzoni was clearly moving away from figuration and the expressive brushstroke. In a critical and mocking review of other artistic methods, Manzoni said: 'I am quite unable to understand those painters who, whilst declaring an active interest in modern problems, still continue even today to confront a painting as if it was a surface to be filled with colour and forms... the painting is finished: a surface of unlimited possibilities is now reduced to a kind of receptacle into which unnatural colours and artificial meanings are forced' (P. Manzoni quoted in 'Free Dimension', Azimuth, no. 2, Milan 1960). For Manzoni, the onus was on the artist to create a 'virgin space', where the canvas could no longer be subordinated to image and external stimulus. The painting should abandon mimetic value in favour of its materials whether kaolin, cotton, fibreglass or styrofoam. The medium itself was to become the work, the new totem. In this respect, Manzoni was echoing the American Jasper Johns whose iconic White Flag (1955) drained all colour from the United States standard, drawing the viewer's attention away from the familiarity of the object towards the nature of its waxed materials.
In January 1957, Manzoni interacted with Yves Klein and Alberto Burri who were both exhibiting their works in Milan. The approach of these artists had a profound impact on Manzoni. Achrome clearly pays a visual debt to Alberto Burri's material works created out of burlap bags, velvet and old shirts as in his Due camicie (1957), and also to Yves Klein's exploration of the dazzling blue monochrome in his Proposte Monochrome: Epoca blu launched at the Galleria Apollinaire. Whilst Manzoni followed the artists' innovations with interest, his Achrome, with its raw physicality and absence of colour, can perhaps be regarded as the apogee of such investigations. For Manzoni, the materiality of the painting was central to the work. Instead of the smooth monochrome, Achrome appears tectonic, the uneven surface of the canvas, split into a grid-like arrangement of squares born out of the cooling, hardening and crystallising process of kaolin on canvas.
This attempt to supersede painting created a fundamental impact on the contemporary artistic milieu. Indeed it has become a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of artists including those united under Conceptualism, Minimalism and Arte Povera. Following an exhibition Manzoni shared with Italian artist Lucio Fontana in 1958, he confidently asserted: 'I am a kind of symbol of the union of the three initiators of the three avant-garde movements in Milan' (P. Manzoni quoted in M. Gale & R. Miracco (eds.), Beyond Painting: Burri, Fontana, Manzoni, Milan 2005, p. 108). Unlike Fontana however, Manzoni fundamentally eschewed the traces of his own presence in the painting. As Germano Celant has observed, 'he does not place himself on or in front of the picture, like Pollock and Fontana, but behind and to one side, almost as if he wishes to draw attention to a parallel flow where for his vision the 'visceral' product, dear to the exponents of Art Informel, can now be provided by the 'painting', that comes into existence by itself' (G. Celant, 'Manzoni and his Times', Piero Manzoni: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2009, p. 48).