Drawing/Writing

In the post-war period, in a climate of renewal and reconsideration of languages, around the dispute between the definitions of abstract art and concrete art that was ratified in Milan by the Arte astratta e concreta (Abstract and Concrete Art exhibition) held at the Palazzo Reale in 1947, Carla Accardi emerged as practically the only female artist who was a protagonist of that conjuncture, an exponent of the Gruppo Forma, founded in Rome in response to the Milan exhibition. Thus, a new path to abstraction was defined, free of narrative memories, focused on the free flow of forms in the artist's mental space. The sign-lettering of Accardi's works from the early 1950s shows a very personal and individual way of expressing oneself through colour and form, which would also be brought to the attention of the art world by other artists in the following years, as can be seen in the work of Irma Blank and Betty Danon. They are surfaces that show traces, a kind of painting-script that is not descriptive but evocative: a transcription of signs that is close to the written word or musical script. For these artists, the non-figuration in the sign is an extension and concretisation of their own Ego in search of an alternative dialogue with the word and the image with the Other.