Viewpoints

Points of View

​There are places where art becomes affective memory and a living presence. Between 2012 and 2014, after artistic evenings at Bar Camponeschi, people would gather at the Largo Argentina penthouse, in Achille Perilli's house-studio. The master, marked by strokes in 2009 and confined to a wheelchair, could not make it up there himself, but his energy, history, and works filled every corner of that space set among the rooftops of Rome.

​An undisputed protagonist of the Italian post-war avant-garde, Perilli was among the founders, in 1947, of the historic Forma 1 group alongside Carla Accardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Giulio Turcato, and other young visionaries. With their famous manifesto, they claimed the primacy of pure form and color against all dogmatism, marking a crucial turning point toward abstractionism in Italy and connecting Roman art to major international movements. Perilli’s research—grounded in geometric mark-making, irrational structures, and a deep literary and theatrical sensitivity—shaped decades of contemporary art history.

​In that suspended space in Largo Argentina, together with his daughter Naja, artists like Eliseo Sonnino and Tancredi Fornasetti, and through my camera, a spontaneous sharing of glances, stories, and visions took shape. The terrace overlooking the city became a privileged observatory, a meeting place of affection born around the figure of the master.

​The exhibition Points of View stems from this memory. It is a tribute to Achille Perilli that unfolds through the life lived in his space: an indissoluble weave between his artistic legacy, the photographs taken in his studio, and the perspectives of the artists who shared his spirit.