Lugano
Antonio Sanfilippo emerges as one of the most distinctive figures in postwar Italian abstraction. Born in Partanna, Sicily, in 1923, and went on to become one of the most original voices in post-war Italian abstract art. After training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, he moved to Rome in 1946. The following year, he signed the manifesto of the Forma 1 Group alongside Accardi, Consagra, Dorazio, Perilli, Turcato and others. This laid the foundations for a radical renewal of Italian painting.
His artistic research has always centred on the concept of the ‘sign’: an immediate graphic gesture which, despite its apparent simplicity, constructs a rigorous and intensely poetic visual language. From his early neo-cubist works to the monochromatic ‘galaxies of signs’ of the early post-war period, Sanfilippo developed an increasingly vibrant and independent use of colour in the 1960s, transforming the canvas into a vibrant field of rhythmic energy and cosmic significance. A phrase often attributed to the Roman critical milieu of those years reads: “Art is not aesthetics, but poetry”, words which reflect his vision well, in which the sign becomes a place of imagination and relationship.
He exhibited at the Venice Biennale from 1948 to 1966, and his works are held in major Italian public collections. Cut short by a car accident in 1980, his career left an indelible mark on the history of modern Italian art.