“…a rhythmic ferment of lines and colors effused with chromatic warmth and delicate poetry composes the showy plot of a vast artistic passion which marks the sure advent of his unmistakable contribution to absolute art”. (Alberto Sartoris, Carla Badialiin “Origins”; Rome, 1942).
Among Italian artists, Carla Badiali (1907-1992) is one of the few who can be classified within what Lea Vergine defined as “the other half of the avant-garde”, underlining the contribution given by women to the evolution of Italian painting in the first half of the last century .
The M77 gallery in Milan dedicates a large retrospective to Carla Badiali, protagonist of Como’s Abstractionism, from 20 January to 15 March 2025organized in collaboration with the artist’s heirs, entitled Geometry and poetry. The exhibition, curated by Luigi Cavadini who was responsible for the general catalog of her work, retraces the entire career of Carla Badiali, spanning six decades of activity, from the first half of the twenties to the end of the eighties, through over fifty, including paintings, drawings and collages.
The exhibition itinerary opens with the phase linked to the figure, attributable to a short time span, approximately between 1925 and 1932, among which the delicate Self-portrait(1926), a colored pastel on paper and continues with her entry into the field of abstract art, between 1932 and 1934, although as she herself has repeatedly maintained “I have never moved from a figurative period to an abstract one . I started with the compositions straight away
abstract.”
Carla Badiali was, right from the start, involved in the experience of that circle of artists, known in the news as “Gruppo Como”, contributing to the artistic debate and comparison with the Milanese abstractionists gathered around the Galleria del Milione, at a time when women were not given much credit, but thanks to the support and incentives to follow the path of abstraction from Manlio Rho, one of the reference figures, together with Mario Radice, of the abstract adventure that arose on the banks of the Lario.
Examples of those years, between the thirties and forties, are the Compositionswhere elements of free geometry, enhanced by a careful and precise choice of colours, fit into a virtual space.
Parallel to her geometric research, Carla Badiali’s works take on a lyrical and musical value of great importance. This is the case with the series The wind riseswell documented in the exhibition, in which the essential forms float on the canvas or on paper, which bring it closer to the lyricism of Osvaldo Licini or, even more, to Vassily Kandinsky, reread in absolute originality, demonstrating a now achieved linguistic autonomy .
This is the period – we are at the beginning of the 1940s – which marks his first affirmation on the stage of public art, first with joining the group Primordial Valueswhich was born from the enthusiasm of the magazine of the same name founded by Franco Ciliberti, then al Primordial Futurists Grouptogether with Cesare Cattaneo, Pietro Lingeri, Marcello Nizzoli, Mario Radice, Manlio Rho, Osvaldo Licini, Giuseppe Terragni and Alberto Sartoris, which led to the formulation of the manifesto and the definitive name of Group
Primordial Futurists Sant’Elia.
The entry into Marinetti’s orbit was of great importance for the abstractionists of Como, who were given an entire room at the 1942 Venice Biennale, in which Carla Badiali exhibited three works, and granted them the opportunity to be present at the Quadrennial of Rome in 1943.
By virtue of the painful aftermath of the war and the renewed commitment to giving new life to his textile design studio which had extraordinary success in Italy and abroad, with collaborations, among others, with Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Balmain, the the fifties and early sixties passed in silence. It was his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1966 that gave impetus to his artistic research.
The review also provides ample evidence of the use of the technique collagea place of experimentation and spatial and plastic scanning, but which Carla Badiali considered the most immediate, perhaps more effective tool than drawing, for assigning the shapes their right location, an ideal design basis for future works and which accompanied her research until in the middle of the eighties.
The exhibition, thirty-five years after the anthological exhibition held in Como in 1990, ends with a quick excursus on Como abstractionism and its exponents who have continued research in the abstract field throughout the show, from Manlio Rho a Mario Radice, from Aldo Galli to Carla Prina to Alvaro Molteni.
Carla Badiali was born in Novedrate (CO) in 1907. After a few years, he moved with his family to France to Saint-Étienne, where he dedicated himself to music and art. Back in Italy, in Como, she continued her studies at the National Silk Institute. After his first works from the 1920s, depicting landscapes and still lifes, the artist approached abstractionism between 1933 and 1934. In the meantime, he dedicated himself to applied art in the textile field, organizing and managing an important laboratory. In 1938 he joined the group Primordial Valueswhich also includes Terragni and Lingeri and two years later signed the Manifesto of the Sant’Elia primordial futurist group. She took part in a series of prestigious exhibitions, including the XXIII Venice Biennale in 1942 and the IV Quadrennial of National Art in Rome in 1943. Carla Badiali’s artistic production was interrupted due to the Second World War, but she resumed exhibiting already in 1951; from this moment on, the activity continued until his death in Como in 1992.
Carlo Franza