Event #247 (Avvenimento #247), 1956. Oil with sand on canvas, 55 3/16 x 55 1/8 inches (140.2 x 140 cm). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice  76.2553.164. © Edmondo Bacci

Edmondo Bacci has applied the physicality of Action painting to the depiction of the origins of matter in extraterrestrial regions. Like the apocalyptic paintings of the years immediately preceding World War I by artists such as Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, his work comingles themes of cosmic genesis and destruction expressed through swirling atmospheric color. The three primaries—red, blue, and yellow—predominate, defining broad areas against which a wide range of other colors play. The painting is like a scenario in which light is separated from darkness and space from matter. Planetary forms seem to coalesce out of material produced by a cosmic eruption; they prepare to establish their orbits and generate life. The immediacy and drama of the event is conveyed through the tactility of the surface. The paint, mixed with sand, is encrusted on the canvas to form a kind of topographic ground evoking plains, ridges, lakes, and peaks. The activity of the artist in ordering chaos is associated with elemental creational processes within the universe.

Lucy Flint