Surface 213

Writing, alphabet, glyphs, the teeth of a comb, forks, segmented tears, locks, chains, claws: the graphic figures of Capogrossi’s signic language express themselves on the canvas in ever-changing modulations. The sign is never repeated as an end unto itself, but is developed in a series of variations, which, as Argan noted in 1967, find a literary parallel in Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style, published in 1947, in that, using the same words, the French writer stages narrative situations whose content changes each time it is told. Surface 213 and its counterpart Surface 231 (1957, Simeoni Collection, Florence) are an example of this modulation, in that the variable consists in the positive-negative effect of the colour and the partitioning of the canvas like a card index.