Another retrospective, covering the same 50 years as the Pat Adams show, just opened at Sperone Westwater. “Carla Accardi: Paintings 1955-2004” brings to New York an artist well known in her native Italy but rarely seen in the United States.

Ms. Accardi’s earliest works (from the 1950s and 1960s) are small paintings in casein on canvas, two-color labyrinths in which figure and ground wrestle for superiority. Ms. Accardi’s mark, a swirling, calligraphic brushstroke that, knotted together, nearly strangles the space, is reminiscent at times of Andre Masson. Works from this period, such as “Azzurro arancio” (1961) and “Frammentigialli” (1956) are some of the best in the show, though the ground rarely pulls forward to the plane.

In the 1960s, Ms. Accardi freed up the mass of calligraphy into individual strokes that resemble signs, letter forms, weapons, and tools. These paintings take their cue from Klee’s late work, but Ms. Accardi, who has a deft and graceful hand, never carries the forms further. Rather than becoming personal symbols with universal appeal, as in Klee, they remain vague and suggestive, not active.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the artist also worked in varnish on clear plastic, which she mounted in layers to unstretched, raw-wood stretcher bars, allowing the rectangular support and crossbars to be visible through the layers of unpainted plastic. A number of these are on view. In each the artist used a single color, either green or white, varying her mark from piece to piece. In “Verde” (1975) woven plastic sheets are painted with large green leaf or bent-leg shapes. The effect is one of looking through foliage, and as in all of the works in plastic the crossbars peek through, suggesting ghostly afterimages – in this case, a tree trunk or a leg seen through a slit skirt; in others, a crucifix or the branches of trees in a dense forest.

The most recent works are large, two-color diptychs that return to the language of the earlier calligraphic paintings. Three of these works were on view. Initially arresting for their vibrant color combinations, the paintings quickly loose their power. Much better and more tasteful, figureless updates of Keith Haring’s works, their linear movements decorate rather than activate the ground. Forms become referential, cinematic, and sequential. The artist’s various vocabularies, interesting and full of possibility, remain safe; they never quite synthesize to become living beings in their own right.