EXHIBITION - GIAN BERTO VANNI

THE EARLY YEARS - 1952–1960

Unbalanced Balance presents a sequence of floating structures, suspended within a textured pale field that reads less as background and more as an atmospheric medium. These vertical forms, composed of tapering planes and stepped geometries, appear to hover with quiet intent. They are rendered with such measured clarity and internal rhythm that they seem less constructed than calibrated, as if charting a language of levitation.

The textured field, built through layers of dry brushwork and tonal variation, suggests not emptiness but density, like a charged stillness. Against this surface, the hovering forms do not disrupt but negotiate. Each form occupies its own register of tension and repose, and together they build a kind of visual syntax that holds the eye in gentle suspension.

There is an unmistakable echo of Kandinsky’s early abstractions here, particularly in the notion that geometry can convey vibration, ascent, or inner resonance. Yet Vanni’s vision is less cosmic and more architectural, closer to a choreography of structures in space than a transcription of music. What binds these elements is their poise, their refusal to collapse into symmetry or settle into rest. This sense of suspended balance will carry into the next works, marking a quiet but deliberate inquiry into the stability of form.