Achrome

Maria Cernuschi Ghiringhelli 1990

Manzoni, Piero

698

Unità di misura: cm; Altezza: 50; Larghezza: 30

Caolino su tela

Astrattismo in Italia nella raccolta Cernuschi Ghiringhelli - Villa Croce, Genova - 1985<br>Manzoni, opere uniche - galleria Cenobio - Visualità, Milano - 1967

The first Achrome is from 1957: a casting of gesso and Kaolin on the canvas with a still informal wall-like effect, but one in which the artist's intervention is kept to a minimum. This series of works was designed as “one single uninterrupted surface” where the material becomes the focus on canvas in squares or wrinkled up: “...a white surface that is simply a white surface and nothing else (a colourless surface that is just a colourless surface). Better than that: a surface that simply is: to be (and to be complete is pure becoming)”. His experiments with Achromes continued over the years: they would incorporate objects, straw, wood, stone, bread rolls, establishing themselves as living entities, independent of the will of the artist himself, becoming increasingly synthetic, in fibreglass, plastic and polystyrene balls, and self-generating, with polystyrene soaked in cobalt chloride whose colours change with the changing of the weather conditions.