Onda in rosso [Red Wave] belongs to a pair of paintings conceived as parallel investigations into color, energy, and spatial compression. Its twin, The Golden Wave, is held in the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection of the Seattle Art Museum. In both artworks, the wave is not a literal image but a force: a swelling of red, both dense and luminous, pressing against a fractured vertical edge.
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Onda in rosso [Red Wave] belongs to a pair of paintings conceived as parallel investigations into color, energy, and spatial compression. Its twin, The Golden Wave, is held in the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection of the Seattle Art Museum. In both artworks, the wave is not a literal image but a force: a swelling of red, both dense and luminous, pressing against a fractured vertical edge.
At first glance, this work may appear to mark a return to earlier compositions derivative of elaborations born from the distortion of landscapes. But instead of the horizontal landscapes of the past, Onda in rosso rotates the axis to explore a vertical thrust, shaped not by topography but by energetic flow.
The red field, subtly layered and scraped, gives off heat and vibration. The formerly flat chromatic surfaces of earlier works are now enriched by a complex superimposition of translucent veils, textured gestures, and tonal variations, lending the field a visceral, almost material weight. Against it, the jagged brown and black mosaic-like margin seems to splinter under pressure. The line dividing the two zones becomes a fault line, holding the composition in magnetic equilibrium.
Though abstract, Onda in rosso evokes the sensation of a landscape convulsed by unseen forces: a dynamic vision of form shaped by pressure rather than contour. In this, the painting shows that artistic development rarely proceeds in straight lines. Vanni revisits earlier spatial solutions not as repetition but as reactivation, transforming them in light of new ideas about tension, structure, and chromatic vitality.
While its structure echoes some spatial strategies of kinetic abstraction, the work avoids seriality or optical illusion in favor of something quietly metaphoric. This painting, and its companion held in the Seattle Art Museum, underscores the coherence of Vanni’s evolving yet rooted vision.
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