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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the Archivio Opera Piero Manzoni, Milan, under the number 842BM.
Throughout his brief but intense life, Manzoni experimented with an idiosyncratic mix of materials to create monochrome surfaces with as little evidence of the artist's hand as possible. That his Achrome have such lyrical power owes much to the materials he chose, from folded or sewn canvas, pebbles, cotton wool, fibreglass, polystyrene, synthetic fibre, fur, cobalt salt, gesso and, finally, bread.
There are very few Achromes using the Italian panini or 'rosette', in existence and it is rare to see a work of this importance on the market. Bread rolls have an inescapable metaphorical significance: "These particular Achromes brought to the surface [Manzoni's] fascination with pneumatics as a spiritual exercise (the breaking of bread in the Christian Mass) and with pneumatology, a concern for the nature of spiritual beings. Indeed, Manzoni's work in general, and the Achrome in particular, are rooted in a specifically metaphysical vision of corporeality, one that starts by acknowledging a special mutuality between substance and light - between something that endures, in other words, and something that is changing." (J. Thomson, in: Piero Manzoni, exh. cat. London, Serpentine Gallery, 1998, p.42.)
His deliberate use of bread rolls in these works derided once and for all any notion of the sacredness of art and the materials used to create it. The transformation of the bread into an Achrome using kaolin is also highly significant: "It is the opposite of the alchemical transformation of material into blue or black such as we find in Otto Piene and Yves Klein, known at the time in Italy and Europe. Manzoni never resorted to fire or sulphur, which crumbles and liquifies, mangles and shatters; rather, he was more interested in freezing and immobilising, in imprisoning energy." (G. Celant, in: ibid., p.23).
Throughout his brief but intense life, Manzoni experimented with an idiosyncratic mix of materials to create monochrome surfaces with as little evidence of the artist's hand as possible. That his Achrome have such lyrical power owes much to the materials he chose, from folded or sewn canvas, pebbles, cotton wool, fibreglass, polystyrene, synthetic fibre, fur, cobalt salt, gesso and, finally, bread.
There are very few Achromes using the Italian panini or 'rosette', in existence and it is rare to see a work of this importance on the market. Bread rolls have an inescapable metaphorical significance: "These particular Achromes brought to the surface [Manzoni's] fascination with pneumatics as a spiritual exercise (the breaking of bread in the Christian Mass) and with pneumatology, a concern for the nature of spiritual beings. Indeed, Manzoni's work in general, and the Achrome in particular, are rooted in a specifically metaphysical vision of corporeality, one that starts by acknowledging a special mutuality between substance and light - between something that endures, in other words, and something that is changing." (J. Thomson, in: Piero Manzoni, exh. cat. London, Serpentine Gallery, 1998, p.42.)
His deliberate use of bread rolls in these works derided once and for all any notion of the sacredness of art and the materials used to create it. The transformation of the bread into an Achrome using kaolin is also highly significant: "It is the opposite of the alchemical transformation of material into blue or black such as we find in Otto Piene and Yves Klein, known at the time in Italy and Europe. Manzoni never resorted to fire or sulphur, which crumbles and liquifies, mangles and shatters; rather, he was more interested in freezing and immobilising, in imprisoning energy." (G. Celant, in: ibid., p.23).