Optical Abstraction by Enrico Sirello, 1974 – Italian Arte Programmata Movement

Optical Abstraction by Enrico Sirello, 1974 – Italian Arte Programmata Movement

Enrico Sirello (Livorno, 1930 – 2012)
Study for a Mural no. 1 (Black Background and Red Axes), 1974
Acrylic on panel, 35 × 35 cm
Signed, dated and titled on the reverse
Archive number 05/1263

This work belongs to the series of mural studies that Enrico Sirello created in the mid-1970s, developing his ongoing research on Gestalt structures and anisotropic visual effects. A leading figure of the Livorno avant-garde and of Italian Arte Programmàta, Sirello translated theories of color and perceptual psychology into a visual language of rhythm and optical tension.

He described these works as “night observations”, born from the “darkness of the mind”—visions pursued during long nocturnal sessions of thought and drawing. The abstract shapes, rather than referring to bottles or human figures, embody mental images: conceptual and aesthetic notes that anticipate larger mural compositions.

The composition explores the relationship between form and direction, where the red verticals act as visual vectors setting the geometric field in motion, producing a perception of vibration across the pictorial surface. In this way Sirello renders visually the principle of perceptual anisotropy—what never remains fixed in the eye but changes with the direction of vision, linking art, perception and science.

Condition: good original condition, stable surface with minor age-related wear.
Frame: original black wooden strip frame.

Biography
Enrico Sirello was an Italian painter, a prominent representative of the Livorno avant-garde and of the Italian Arte Programmàta movement. From 1963 onward, supported by studies in Gestalt psychology and color theory, he developed “gestaltic structures” and his own theory of anisotropic effects, analyzing the perceptual behavior of vision.

In 1965 he organized with Baldi, Cannilla, Drei, Glattfelder, Guerrieri, Lazzari, Lorenzetti, Masi, Pace and Pesciò the exhibition-debate Strutture Significanti at the Casa della Cultura in Livorno—later shown in Genoa and Turin—with critical essays by Giulio Carlo Argan, Germano Beringheli, Emilio Garroni and Claudio Popovich. Argan took special interest in Sirello’s theory of anisotropic effects and in his 1964 programmatic text presented at Galleria Giraldi, Livorno.

Sirello combined structural rigor and perceptual sensitivity. His compositions, based on geometric modules and chromatic rhythm, belong to the current of Arte Programmàta, a movement that sought to convey to the viewer a perception of movement—whether real or illusory—through pre-planned visual structures and experimental forms.