In Torneo [Tournament], Vanni enters a new phase in which tension no longer resides between large chromatic fields, as in Strappo, but arises from the interplay of small, intensely detailed star-shaped forms, both with each other and with the surrounding red field. That field itself is composed through three successive applications: a first, thin layer of carmine that deliberately lets the weave of the canvas show through; a fragmentary application of medium red; and final daubs of scarlet impasto around the stellar shapes. The result is a surface that both breathes and vibrates with internal energy.
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In Torneo [Tournament], Vanni enters a new phase in which tension no longer resides between large chromatic fields, as in Strappo, but arises from the interplay of small, intensely detailed star-shaped forms, both with each other and with the surrounding red field. That field itself is composed through three successive applications: a first, thin layer of carmine that deliberately lets the weave of the canvas show through; a fragmentary application of medium red; and final daubs of scarlet impasto around the stellar shapes. The result is a surface that both breathes and vibrates with internal energy.
The layering of color creates the impression that these star-like forms are generating magnetic fields that attract and organize the most luminous particles of their environment. Floating like suspended filaments, the jewel-like elements, triangular or stellar in shape, rendered in turquoise, yellow, and white, evoke the crystalline structures or radiolarians protozoa. Rather than being painted over the surface, they are inscribed on areas left bare in the earlier layers, which integrates them seamlessly into the pictorial space and allows for subtle gradations between the forms and their surrounding field.
Gone is any vestige of grid-based composition. What takes its place are crystalline irradiations, at once biological and cosmic. The horizontal strips at the margins echo the chromatic values of the central shapes, suggesting that what we see is only a fragment of a broader visual organism.
Torneo belongs to a group of works painted during this period that explore a shared compositional logic, chromatic structure, and energetic charge. In these paintings, Vanni continues to move away from the immersive ethos of Color Field painting. Rather than presenting color as a singular, enveloping subject, he constructs it as a structured environment animated by internal relationships. The subtle emergence of texture draws his work closer to the poetics of Arte Informale, offering a glimpse of the direction his painting is about to take.
Though informed by Vanni’s awareness of optical abstraction and the diagrammatic logics seen in the work of artists near Galerie Denise René, the small floating forms here resist mechanical repetition. Instead, they become poetic centers of gravity within a precisely controlled field.
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