Antonio Sanfilippo

Biography

Antonio Sanfilippo 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.

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