Una cosa ovvia. Carla Accardi, Tenda, 1965-1966

Carla Accardi’s Tenda (tent), 1965-66, is the first work by the artist engaging real space, being at the same time a painted object. Made by an unorthodox material (a transparent plastic known as Sicofoil painted with brilliant industrial colours), Tenda stands as a pitched-roof enclosure, a little architecture tall enough to enter in; but it is also an exercise of painting on sheets of plastic assembled and covered with bright green and red brushstroke patterns. The articles focuses on the physical quality of Tenda, then on the first exhibitions – at Galleria Notizie in Turin in 1966, with a text by Carla Lonzi; in Essen and Milan, both presented by Udo Kultermann – and on its reception. The usual references to the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna and to a small temple, repeatedly made by Accardi, are questioned in the light of a careful reading of the first statements given by the artist in a long conversation with Carla Lonzi. There, or rather in a passage of the same dialogue published three years later in the book Autoritratto, Accardi evoked some images of Turkish tents that Lonzi had showed her: a photograph of the interior of a XVIIth century tent now at Krakow is in fact likely to be at the origin of the unique space and the shelter character of Tenda. The same conversation allows to reconsider Tenda on the eve of the feminist engagement of both Accardi and Lonzi, as a personal and intimate space of female creativity.