Galleria Forma, Genova
Il Collezionista d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the late 1960s

Venice, Teatro La Fenice, Sale Apollinee, Piero Manzoni, 1968
Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Piero Manzoni, 1971, illustrated
London, Tate Gallery, Piero Manzoni. Paintings, Reliefs & Objects, 1974, n.109
Bologna, Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Europa/America, l'Astrazione Determinata, 1960-1976, 1976
Venice, XLII Biennale Internazionale dell'Arte, 1986
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville; Herning, Kunstmuseum; Madrid, Fundació La Caixa; Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Piero Manzoni, 1991-92, no. 126, p. 126, illustrated with incorrect orientation, (in Herning, p. 213, pl. 139, illustrated)
London, Serpentine Gallery, Piero Manzoni, 1998, p. 291, pl. 249, illustrated in colour

Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Milan 1975, p. 264, no. 13 ppo, illustrated
Freddy Battino and Luca Palazzoli, Piero Manzoni Catalogue Raisonné, Milan 1991, p. 413, no. 860, illustrated
Germano Celant, Piero Manzoni Catalogo Generale, Milan 2004, Vol. II, p. 560, no. 1125, ill🦂ustrated in co🤪lour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. The surface has slightly discoloured, which is already visible in the 1975 catalogue raisonné by Germano Celant. Over time a number of polystyrene beads have detached in a few areas, as visible in the catalogue illustration and most notably in the bottom right quadrant.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Executed in 1962-3, Achrome is an outstanding example from Piero Manzoni's groundbreaking eponymous series. Here Manzoni has turned his attention to expanded polystyrene, an innovative material, which in its bright, pristine condition retains a colourless brilliance that matches the scruples of the artist. With its snow-like quality and undefined composure there is an overwhelming impression of methodical chaos and the crowded picture plane invites the viewer to see it as an unquantifiable expanse. The adherence to repetitive titles throughout the series, as here, encourages complete immersion, moment by moment, in the series of imageless spaces. By refusing to give way to any individual features or allusions, the homogenous titles enforce Manzoni's insistence on the works being measurable only within their particular visual experience. 'Abstractions and references must be totally avoided. In our freedom of invention we must succeed in constructing a world that can be measured only in its own terms.' (Piero Manzoni, 'For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', c.1957, in Exhibition Catalogue, London, Tate Gallery, Piero Manzoni: Paintings, Reliefs and Objects, 1974, p.17).

Vast in scale, the present Achrome is the largest work from this very small and extraordinary rare body of works created with expanded polystyrene balls. Shortly after the artist premature death, the present work was included in his first major retrospective in 1968 in Venice in the Sale Apollinee of La Fenice organized by Attilio Codognato and Giovanni Camuffo of the Galleria del Leone as well as the landmark exhibition in 1971 organized by Palma Bucarelli in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome and curated by Germano Celant, which generated great offence to the public and attracted incredible attention from the press. In 1974 Achrome was exhibited in an important retrospective on the artist at the Tate Gallery in London at the same time of an exhibition devoted to Yves Klein. These two breakthrough shows created huge scandal at the time and the two artists became famously known as the enfants terribles of the post-war era.

This piece is a notably mature materialization of the Achrome concept - a concept that Manzoni invented in 1957, in his search for a physical outlet for painting. The stress was on bringing primary materials to the fore, eliminating hue, line, form, or any signifying mark: early examples were made up of rough, scratched gesso, while others consisted of cut-up canvas in irregular rectangles or pleats. As the series grew, it embodied ideas expressed in Manzoni's renowned manifesto, published in the same year. For the young artist, it was essential that the canvas should remain an area of open experimentation. 'We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space on to which to project out mental stenography. It is the area of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images' (Piero Manzoni, Ibid., p.17).

Crowded with expanded polystyrene balls, this piece shows Manzoni directing his energies towards the elimination of psychological and expressive intent. Advancing the subtleties of space that Mondrian achieved in paint, Manzoni used expanded polystyrene to create a situation charged with tension from the fact that as an inert and colourless material, expanded polystyrene has the potential for flexibility and to be reshaped. For this reason Celant reflected about the role of the frame by saying: "The container, usually a sort of white box frame, became fundamental for the Achrome made with new materials: in cotton, polystyrene balls, and fibres, it became fundamental, often the velvet of the matte conferred depth and the box that framed the works was not only functional to the preservation and organic to the concept of proportionality of the work, it was truly an aesthetic limit that enclosed the materials of the everyday". (Germano Celant cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Gagosian Gallery, Manzoni, 2009, p. 308).

The quest for 'freedom' from narrative content was an agenda shared by a number of Manzoni's contemporaries - in fact the Achrome was almost certainly stimulated by the work of Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri, and not least the Monochromes of Yves Klein (whose first show in Italy in 1957 had made a deep impression on Manzoni). However Manzoni's strategy was utterly distinctive. Rather than apply paint to the canvas's surface, he focussed on the material of the surface itself, allowing it to change in manifestation, apparently of its own accord. Throughout the series of Achromes, Manzoni took a detached, empirical stance, carrying out trials into how different materials could transform our understanding of what a painting is, or can be. This meant testing the physical constraints of a painting - the syntax of colour, canvas, and horizontal and vertical surfaces. At first, canvases would be covered with gesso or soaked in liquid kaolin, a soft china clay used in making porcelain. Seemingly white, in fact the kaolin achieved the effect of removing colour whilst adding weight, which could be used to make folds or sags in the canvas. Thus the artwork emerged, autonomously as it were, in the drying process. Born, it was untouched - unsullied - by interference from the artist. The Achromes were an attempt to resist any limitations other than their own existence, and in this piece, the purity and adaptability of the polystyrene represent the ultimate 'tabula rasa'.

Manzoni conducted out the Achrome experiments in a range of materials over several years, revealing a searching imagination: from the expanded polysterene in this piece to glass fibre, fur, papier mache, plaster, cotton chemically treated so that changes in temperature would alter the colour, cotton wool, rabbit fur, straw, bread rolls sealed in plastic and covered with kaolin, and stones. Each material was chosen for the capacity to determine its own outcome, reducing the transformative input of the artist's hand to virtually nil. The Achrome here is not without a layer of irony: expanded polysterene appeals so directly to the sense of touch and to associations from packaging to environmental pollution that the viewer is under pressure to resist the pull of association and to lose themselves in the actuality of the Achrome. 'Symbolism and description, memories, misty impressions, of childhood, pictoricism, sentimentalism: all this must be absolutely excluded' (Piero Manzoni, Ibid., p.17).

Far from Klein's conviction in the transcendental, with his notion of the body as a 'living paintbrush', Manzoni worked by the edict, 'being is all that counts', using the Achromes as samples of unhampered existence. Made in the last years of his young life, there is a tender poignancy in this particular Achrome's stand for 'being' - a stand ꦇthat, concep♏tually and materially, remains astonishingly fresh.