Piero Manzoni

Galerie Thomas, Munich 

Private Collection, Stuttgart (acquired from the above in 1971)

Sale: Christie's, London, The Italian Sale 20th Century Art, 15 October 2007, Lot 237

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Milan 1975, p. 199, no. 46, illustrated

Freddy Battino and Luca Palazzoli, Eds., Piero Manzoni Catalogue Raisonné, Milan 1991, p. 352, no. 642, illustrated

Germano Gelant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Vol. II, Milan 2004, p. 494, no. 659, illustrated

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Very close inspection reveals an extremely minor rubmark to the top right corner tip and a minor spot of rust towards the centre of the overturn bottom edge. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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"Why shouldn’t this receptacle be emptied? Why shouldn’t this surface be freed? Why not seek to discover the unlimited meaning of total space, of pure and absolute light?"

Piero Manzoni, 'Free Dimension' (1960) in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, Serpentine Gallery, Piero Manzoni, 1998, p. 130. 

Intricately sewn squares of canvas soaked in kaolin comprise the exquisitely proportioned quadratic grid or Piero Manzoni's Achrome: a classically beautiful and pure example from his seminal, eponymous series. Created between 1959 and 1960, when the artist was arguably at the zenith of his tragically short career, the present work perfectly epitomises the essence of Manzoni’s artistic concerns and radical creative ideas at a time of international cultural and political ferment. The 1950s saw an almost universal reaction against the horrors of the Second World War, and the subsequent re-drawing of the political map within Europe – coupled with economic and physical hardships and the mass anxiety engendered by the development of nuclear capability – led to a corresponding re-evaluation of the cultural zeitgeist alongside a questioning of the very purpose and nature of art itself. It was against this socio-political background that Manzoni produced his remarkable Achromes; visions of extraordinary beauty and purity within a troubled world. 

The years 1959 and 1960 had been a period of remarkable artistic activity for Manzoni due to his extensive involvement with the ZERO artists, a group which featured an extraordinary selection of creative pioneers amongst its affiliates, including Yves Klein, Arman, Lucio Fontana and Enrico Castellani as well as Manzoni. Founded in Dusseldorf in 1958 by Otto Piene, Günther Uecker and Heinz Mack, ZERO sought to annihilate all forms of representation within art in order to celebrate the possibilities inherent in ‘nothingness’ and to move beyond the confines of the canvas. Piene sought to encapsulate the aims of the group in a statement of 1958: “Zero is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new” (Otto Piene, 'Die Entstehung der Gruppe ‘Zero’', The Times Literary Supplement, London, 3 September 1964). Manzoni exhibited with the group in 1959 at Documenta I and was to spend the next few years acting as a tireless bridge between the international members of ZERO, seeking to perpetuate their ideas and aims, to the extent that Piene referred to the artist as a “messenger, carrying the Zero message all over Europe" (Otto Piene quoted in: Heiner Stachelhaus, Zero: Mack Piene Uecker, Dusseldorf 1993, p.153).

Despite the commonality of interest with the concerns of the other ZERO artists, Manzoni’s Achromes actually anticipated ZERO’s founding. Following the publication of his manifesto, 'Per la scoperta di una zona di immagini', in 1956-57, Manzoni determined on finding a means of expressing the power of the subconscious through the creation of a completely subject-less, non-representational work, emphasising the surface and materials as the true focus of the piece. The Achromes operate in a world beyond abstraction, wholly removed from all extraneous, earthly distractions. Liberated from all chromatic or figurative implications and freed of all allusive and descriptive, allegorical and symbolic input, Manzoni’s unspeaking, colourless constructions express nothing but their very own state of being. Although Manzoni proceeded to experiment with various different materials (felt and cotton in 1960, wool and rabbit fur in 1961 and gravel and bread rolls in 1962) as a means of investigating the limitations and potential of the painted surface, ultimately it is the kaolin on canvas that embodies, at its most effective, the artist’s attempt to minimise personality or gesture in the face of the work's crucial purity. Manzoni himself had outlined the aim of ridding his art of external distractions: “The problem lies in freeing oneself from the extraneous details and useless gestures; details and gestures that are polluting the customary art of our day” (Piero Manzoni quoted in: Exhibition Catalogue, London, The Serpentine Gallery, Piero Manzoni, 1998, p. 69). Possessing a timeless clarity and immense visual strength, Achrome and its counterparts within the series, stand as powerful encapsulations of these concerns and ideals, as well as serving as pioneering expositions of an utterly ground-breaking aesthetic and philosophical dialectic.