Antonio Sanfilippo

After graduating from the artistic high school of Palermo, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence and the Academy of Fine Arts of Palermo. The artist’s debut took place in 1945-1946 and shows the influence of Picasso and neo-cubism. In 1947, however, together with Carla Accardi (they married in 1949), he was one of the founders of the “Forma 1” group. He exhibited his works at the XXIV Venice Biennale in 1948 (he was also in Venice in 1954 and 1964, and in 1966 with a personal room). In the same year he participated in the V Quadrennial in Rome (his work was also exhibited at the VII Quadrennial in 1955).

Thanks to the long periods spent in Paris, he approached above all the work of Magnelli, and subsequently that of Hartung and Kandinsky, thus developing his own very particular painting of signs, comparable to ‘ “Art Autre” by Tapié. From 1950 onwards he moved away from concrete and cubist art and developed his own personal poetics based on signs and informal art. In 1953-1954 the notion of sign becomes crucial for his work: “I use exclusively graphic signs which I place on the surface with great immediacy and rapidity”.

Equally important for the artist is the concept of space, a space “to be filled, popularized, thickened: with a horror vacui which is before all love for the original form”. His research continues and is expressed in galaxies of signs (mainly monochrome until 1963, and subsequently multicoloured, with very bright tones). Although these “galaxies” are initially dense, they will become internationally known for subsequent ones, with more widespread and rarefied signs. Since 1971 the artist has significantly limited his pictorial production and exhibition activity, dedicating himself mainly to the creation of works on paper: drawings in pen, pencil and ink. He died in Rome in a car accident on 31 January 1980, shortly before an important retrospective of his work at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.