Achille Pace, founder of Premio Termoli, dies at 98

Achille Pace, a leading figure in 20th-century Italian art and founder of the Premio Termoli, died in Rome on September 28, 2021, at age 98. Born in Termoli in 1923, Pace launched the Premio Termoli in 1955 at the Galleria Civica (later MACTE), attracting artists like Burri, Capogrossi, Vedova, and Fontana, whose donations built a major collection. In the early 1960s, he co-founded Gruppo Uno with artists Frascà, Santoro, Pace, Carrino, Uncini, and Biggi, focusing on rational visual language and geometric structures. Influenced by German Expressionism, Paul Klee, and Jackson Pollock's Action painting, Pace developed a distinctive style characterized by monochrome backgrounds traversed by cotton thread, embodying his "poetics of the thread." He exhibited at the Quadriennale di Roma and the Venice Biennale (1980, 1982), and internationally in Moscow, Leningrad, and at Akron University in Ohio. His funeral was held on October 2, 2021, at the Chiesa degli Artisti in Rome.