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Dimensions: 39 3/8 by 27 5/8 in. 100 by 70.2 cm.
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Provenance: Galleria il Punto, Turin
Private Collection, Turin
Acquired by the present owner from the above
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Exhibited: London, The Serpentine Gallery, Piero Manzoni, February - April 1998, p. 98-99, illustrated in color
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Literature: Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni, Catalogo Generale, Milan, 1975, cat. no. 99 cg, p. 148, illustrated (incorrectly)
Freddy Battino and Luca Palazzoli, Piero Manzoni, Catalogue Raisonné, Milan, 1991, cat. no. 367, p. 279, illustrated
Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni, Catalogo Generale, Vol. II, Milan, 2004, cat. no. 253, p. 431, illustrated (incorrectly)
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Notes: Very few artists are capable of imbuing an aesthetically sublime work of art with a highly conceptual premise. Piero Manzoni is one of them, and Achrome is one of the best examples of his life-long investigation into the meaning of the painted surface. Along with Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein, Manzoni tried to define a new method with which to approach the pictorial surface during a crucial period of artistic innovation and change in European art between the 1950s and 1960s. Reaching their artistic maturity in the shadows of World War II and, subsequently, American Abstract Expressionism, these artists coaxed a transformation of the role of the artist and the practice of art. Their aim was - as a reaction to the exasperation of the subjectivity characteristic of Abstract Expressionism and Informel in Europe - to deprive the canvas of any personal and social values, feelings and emotions.
Developing further Klein's idea of the monochromatic surface by producing a canvas - baptized Achrome which means "no color" - Manzoni succeeded in transforming the painting into an autonomous entity. As he stated in 1957, "We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space onto which to project our mental scenography. It is an arena of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images. Images which are as absolute as possible, which cannot be valued for that which they record, explain or express, but only for which they are: to be." (Piero Manzoni, For the Discovery of a Zone of Images, Milan, 1957, n.p.)
The answer to this quest was the Achrome, an un-emotive, white, neutral surface, which avoids and denies imagery in favor of a more radical purity, a work endowed with its autonomous existence. The first Achromes were made in 1957, and were built up of rough gesso that Manzoni scratched or marked. In 1958, the artist discovered the use of kaolin, which allowed him to obtain the ideal Achrome surface. Applied to the loose pleats of the canvas in fact, its chalky materiality and its colorlessness enhanced a sense of the canvas actively expressing itself. Although Manzoni continued to experiment with different materials (felt and cotton in 1960, wool and rabbit fur in 1961, and gravel and bread rolls in 1962) in order to investigate the limitations and possibilities of the painted surface, it is the kaolin on pleated canvas that embodies at its best the artist's attempt to minimize any sense of his own personality or gesture that would poison the purity of the image. Therefore, Manzoni does not paint the canvas, but rather pleats it and coats it in kaolin. It is through the drying process that the work achieves its final form, without the intervention of the artist, who leaves the last stages of creation to the medium itself.
The present work is a superb example of how the subtlest variation in the surface unites with the sheer monochromatic poetry in order to express the artist's creative vision. The genius of Piero Manzoni, who despite his tragically short life, anticipated Conceptualism and Arte Povera, lies in this rare capability. As the artist stated in 1960, "The artist has achieved integral freedom; pure material becomes pure energy; the obstacle of the space, the slavery to subjective foibles, are annihilated; all problems of artistic criticism are surmounted; everything is permitted." (Piero Manzoni, "Free Dimension" in Azimuth, no. 2, Milan, 1960, n.p.)
