Ruggero Vanni (b. Paris, 1958) is an Italian and American painter. He was born in Paris and grew up in Rome, where he attended the Istituto d’Arte. In 1979, he received a scholarship to study at The Cooper Union School of Art in New York, where he has established himself up to present. His first solo show was at Il Ponte Gallery, Rome in 1986, and he has continued to exhibit nationally and internationally over the last forty years. Vanni’s work has drawn inspiration from the tumultuous activity of Manhattan since his arrival in the late 70’s, in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. He found in that movement the perfect complement to his interest in late Renaissance Venetian painting. In the summer, he nourishes his sensibility from the seascape of Greece, which he knows intimately, observing its shifting forces, to distinguish forms, orders, and patterns that will emerge in his work. He lives and works between his studios in Amelia and New York City.
Public collections include: Pinacoteca of Aosta, Italy; Irving Cancer Center, Columbia University, NY; Yale Eye Center, Yale University, New Haven, CT; Camba Housing Ventures, Brooklyn, NY.
The nature of Ruggero Vanni’s paintings can be likened to the “coralline” algae encrusting deep-sea rock formations. These slow-growing patches of color expand by millimeters every year, adding layer upon layer of “paint” to their underlying structure. The end of this painstaking process unfolds a singular, gem-like tapestry for the beholder. In the eyes of the diver, the algae’s hues adhere not only to the forms on which they rest (grey boulders or jagged edges), but the shimmering refraction conveyed by the medium of the ocean’s depths.
Like the deep-sea diver, viewers must immerse themselves in Vanni’s paintings. To enter the composition, any nook or cranny of space will do, for it has no intended center; that is for the viewer to find. Let yourself be carried away in contemplation by the gestural current of the work: inverted spirals, light playing on a fragment… And your mind will move in tune with these ebbs and flows.
My works allude to natural phenomena, in a raw state, devoid of the limiting constrictions of literal representation. Nature is there, as a landscape, a view looking up in the air, or plunging down underwater. Imagery is kept on the edge of recognition, so the final association is created in the mind.
