EXHIBITION - REDISCOVERING

GIAN BERTO VANNI:

THE EARLY YEARS - 1952–1960

In Descrizione di una Corrente [Description of a Current], Vanni expands the prismatic vocabulary first developed in Inverno, introducing a pulsing rhythm of dots that overlays and animates the underlying structure. While the faceted planes remain, they are no longer stable. A new energy moves through the painting, less a composition than a field in motion. The chromatic tesserae in red, violet, orange, and indigo are traversed by a network of dashes and dots, signaling the “subterranean pulsations” Vanni described: an internal current whose force seems to push and bend the geometry from within.

The influence of Albers is still present, especially in the chromatic relationships and precise modulation of color. But the sensibility has shifted. Here, color becomes kinetic, perceptually unstable, vibrating across surfaces that simultaneously hold and disrupt it. The dot matrix,echoing Divisionist technique yet stripped of figuration, creates a vibration that reads as both optical and conceptual. If Muraglia cinese marked a still structure shaped by color, Descrizione di una Corrente introduces the idea of painting as a system of tensions. Form is not fixed but carried along by the invisible logic of a current.