PARIS.- The work of art felt to me, at a certain point, like a possibility for meeting, like an invitation to participate, addressed by the artists to each of us. ---Carla Lonzi, Autoritratto, 1969

A unique text in the field of art, Autoritratto (Self-Portrait, 1969) is the last book published by author and radical thinker Carla Lonzi (1931- 1982) as an art critic before she dedicated herself entirely to the feminist cause. It collects the words of 14 artists interviewed by Lonzi during the 1960s, painting a vivid, human portrait of a generation of creators who speak out about their practice and what it means to them to be an artist.

It was during a long visit to the United States between 1967 and 1968 that Lonzi dedicated herself to transcribing the many conversations and correspondences she had had over the previous decade with a circle of leading artists on the Italian scene. From her questions and each artist’s answers, she then weaves an imaginary round table where each would respond to the thoughts of the others, or, as Lonzi describes it in her introduction: ‘‘a sort of convivium, real for me since I lived it, even if it didn’t happen in a single unit of time and place.’’

This gives rise to lively debates on the relationship between technique and technology, art world institutions and, in particular, the role of the critic, which the artists perceive as very different in Italy and the USA. Lonzi asks them about their influences and experiences, the artists share anecdotes from their professional and private lives. More than once, the conversation takes a political turn, highlighting the protest movements of the 1960s, both in Italy and abroad, and the role artists have to play in society.

Without attempting to establish a chronology or to group the artists into movements or schools, the exhibition features a dialogue between the works of each artist and their words, through excerpts from the text.

One of the few interactions featured in Autoritratto that actually occurred is the discussion between Enrico Castellani and the sculptor Pietro Consagra around the countercultures of the 1960s. The two artists compare the student protests happening at time with the Hippie movement in the United States.

‘‘For me, to differentiate the frontal space from the central space was, for me, a raising of consciousness of social problems, of my way of saying that I didn’t believe in anything’’ explains Consagra, represented in the exhibition by his work Città frontale (Frontal City, 1968), owned by the artist’s family and created while his partner Lonzi was working on Autoritratto.

Alongside this sculpture is a large Sicofoil made in 1967 and dedicated to the author by Carla Accardi, co-founder with Lonzi of the Rivolta Femminile collective. Accardi intervenes numerous times in the text of Autoritratto, often interrogating Lonzi on her project and, more broadly, on the role of the critic in art.

This same structural questioning animates the debates between Jannis Kounellis and Luciano Fabro, in particular, whose performative practices push the boundaries of institutional exhibition frameworks. They are represented in the exhibition by historic
works: Kounellis by a canvas from his famous Alfabeto of the early 1960s, and Fabro by In Cubo (misure di Carla) (In Cube (Carla’s measurements), 1966), an interactive work based on Lonzi’s height and arm-span belonging to the artist’s family, who, through their generous loan, wish to take part in the tribute to the author.

The doyen of the group, Lucio Fontana, talks about his changing relationship to technique, from his ceramics to the Concetti Spaziali (Spatial Concepts). For him in the 1960s, ‘‘it’s the creation that’s important,» he says, «technique has a secondary.’’ Upon which, Giulio Paolini nuances that the latter ‘‘allows us to subtract, from the space in which we are present, the other part of the space that is the work of art, and which nullifies itself, precisely through this technique.’’ Or, as Pino Pascali adds later in the text, ‘‘the Gallery isn’t there, it’s truly your paintings that make the Gallery.’’

Each artist defines in their own words their conception of a work of art and the role of the artist in Autoritratto. Getulio Alviani asserts that he prefers “to think of objects rather than to think,» while for Mario Nigro the physical work is merely a pretext for a broader research into rhythm and infinity, as shown by the work Gli eserciti, le guerre (The armies, the wars, 1969) which is illustrated in Autoritratto whilst in progress. For Mimmo Rotella and Giulio Turcato, ‘‘magic’’ and ‘‘surprise’’ respectively are essential to the artist’s work.

At the heart of the debate is the comparison between the spheres of American and Italian art, which introduces Salvatore Scarpitta, an Italian-born artist based in New York. He describes the disparate reception in Italy and the USA of his bandaged canvases, such as the one presented in the exhibition. Only Cy Twombly, an American artist working in Rome and contacted in 1962, leaves Lonzi without an answer. Nevertheless, she incorporates the questions she had submitted to him into the imaginary conversation, and makes the American artist appear at several key moments in the text, quoting his ‘‘(Silence.)’’.

Carla Accardi attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Palermo, where she met Antonio Sanfilippo who would become her husband. In 1946, she spent a few months at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, before leaving for Rome with Sanfilippo. There they met Attardi, Dorazio, Guerrini, Perilli and Turcato in Pietro Consagra’s studio, with whom they signed the manifesto “Forma 1” in 1947. The following year Accardi exhibited at the Venice Biennale.

Accardi exhibited widely throughout the 1950s, taking part in the landmark group show Arte astratta e concreta in Italia (1951) at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, and showing her work in Rome, Venice, London and Osaka, as well as Paris, thanks to the art critic Michel Tapié, whom she met in 1954.

In 1965, at the Rome Quadrenniale, she exhibited her painted Sicofoil cylinders for the first time. The following year, she presented Tenda (Tent) — an environmental work in painted Sicofoil — at the Notizie Gallery in Turin. The same work was then exhibited at the 37th Venice Biennale in 1978. In 1968 at the Marlborough Gallery in Rome she unveiled Ambiente arancio (Orange environment) and in 1971 Triplice tenda (Triple tent). At the beginning of the 1980s, Accardi created the Parentesi series in which she returned to raw canvases.

In 1988 she was once again invited to take part in the Venice Biennale with a personal room in the Italian pavilion and received her first major retrospective at the Galleria Civica in Modena. She took part in the Venice Biennale again in the early 1990s on the invitation of Achille Bonito Oliva. Her work was also included in the 1994 landmark exhibition The Italian Metamorphosis 1943-1968 curated by Germano Celant at the Guggenheim in New York. Further retrospectives of her work were held in in the historical rooms of the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea del Castello di Rivoli in 1994, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2002 and at Museo MACRO, Rome in 2004.

Accardi was a committed feminist and Marxist throughout her life, having co-founded the Rivolta Femminile collective in 1970 alongside Carla Lonzi and Elvira Banotti. Following her death, a number of solo and group exhibitions featuring her work have been held at in museums worldwide, such as Carla Accardi. Contesti at the Museo del Novecento in Milan in 2020 and Elles font l’abstraction at the Centre Pompidou in 2021. Her work is housed in prominent museum collections, including that of the Centre Pompidou, Paris.