Carla Badiali

Carla Badiali (1907-1992), originally from the province of Como,  was a leading figure in Como abstract art and a prominent figure in 20th-century textile design. From a young age, she demonstrated   a refined painting technique and a particular sensitivity to color, form, and composition. Her work ranged from painting to textile design: two languages that, in her case, were not separate worlds but dimensions that continually intertwined. Her paintings reveal the same search for rhythm, modularity, and chromatic harmony that characterizes her textile designs. In her fabrics, on the other hand, Badiali brings the compositional refinement and inventive freedom of abstract painting, transforming a functional object into an exercise in visual balance. In this intersection between art and industry, she was able to combine experimentation and productive functionality, translating everyday details into essential, elegant, and surprisingly contemporary compositions.

Badiali joined a group of abstract artists and futurists who called themselves “Primordiali Futuristi Sant'Elia” (Primordial Futurists of Sant'Elia), in reference to Antonio Sant'Elia, a great architect from Como who was part of the futurist movement and was named by Marinetti as the representative of architecture in the futurist sphere. As critic Luigi Cavadini observed, “the discourse of Primordiale is quite complex. It can be traced back to a primordial idealism, an idealism that looked to the origins of man”.                         This perspective allows us to interpret her abstraction as a return to essential forms and profound structures of seeing: not an escape from reality, but a recomposition of the world in signs, measures, and rhythms.

During World War II, Badiali was active in the Resistance, taking on an anti-fascist role that was more about actions than statements. This also included the falsification of documents,         in which she participated by providing technical skills, manual precision, and extreme attention to detail: qualities that characterize Badiali's work.

The same attitude to observation entered into her design process. To create her drawings, she used high-contrast black and white photographs and copies of various real-life elements: silk ribbons, textiles, flowers, and candy wrappers, studying folds, volumes and shadows with precision before reinterpreting the object with creative freedom, stylizing reality without losing  its essence. 

During her career, she collaborated with important fashion houses such as Givenchy and Balmain. Among the most documented materials is her collaboration with Cotonificio Legler and Hubert de Givenchy in the 1950s, which resulted in a series of highly successful printed cottons. For the “Sabrina” collection (1955),   she worked with ribbons, bows, and small everyday items, creating trompe-l'oeil fabrics in pastel shades. Using a similar process, she also prepared the 1956 collection dedicated to candies and bonbons: highly realistic designs, sharp side shadows, and relief effects, obtained by using the packaging (candy wrappers) as a visual basis, then enlarged, stylized, and repeated with precision. Trompe-l'oeil thus became one of the most recognizable features of her work: perspectives, lights, and shadows transformed the fabricinto a dynamic space, suspended between reality and invention. Even today, her designs amaze with their elegance and modernity, demonstrating how art can be decorative, conceptual, and narrative at the same time.

Interview with Luigi Cavadini, Interviewed by the author, Online, May 7, 2025, at 5:03 p.m. Rome time.

Margherita Rosina, Francina Chiara, Carla Badiali: disegnare il tessuto (Designing Fabric), NodoLibri, Como 2007.