Page 29 - GBVCatalog

GIAN BERTO VANNI
29 CATALOGUE RAISONNÈ
GV5211
Tramonto
Yale, New Haven, 1952 Oil on Canvas
28 x 36 in., 71 x 91 cm. Whereabouts unknown
Exhib: Gian Berto Vanni, Galleria Schneider, Rome, March 19 - 31, 1955
Bibl: Ettore La Padula, Gian Berto Vanni, in “Alfabeto”, Rome, January 1955
Art, “Rome Daily American”, Rome, March 23, 1955 Virgilio Guzzi, G.B. Vanni alla Schneider, in “Il Tempo”, Rome, April 5, 1955
The studies at Yale with Josef
Albers have been an invaluable opportunity to evaluate and develop his previous work in a constant dialogue with the great master. He worked for a long time on this painting, the first he created there. It is closely linked to the figurations developed in Holland but, in spite of the reference to landscape, it represents yet a further parting from direct representation.
One has a clear perception of the effort that this represents from what he wrote during the creation of this work, in the autumn of 1952, to his future wife: "The Swedish late sunset structure remains... but it is so difficult to simplify, to say more with less! And to struggle against the ease of a known solution, which the hand is accustomed to putting down like a calligraphy - and to understand that you have to sacrifice one form studied for hours to another that has appeared by chance - but which becomes part of the life of the canvas, if you are aware of its fragile beauty, and able to be modest in the face of that strange thing that is a painting, which begins to live alone and asks and begs to be completed in a certain way without destroying its nervous system!"
GV5301
Inverno
Yale, New Haven, 1953
Oil on Canvas
28.5 x 38.5 in., 72 x 98 cm. Vanni Estate Collection
Exhib: Gian Berto Vanni, Galleria Schneider, Rome, March 19 - 31, 1955
Gian Berto Vanni. Opere dal 1950 al 1977, Galleria Nuovo Carpine, Rome, May 1977
Bibl: Virgilio Guzzi, G.B. Vanni alla Schneider, in “Il Tempo”, Rome, April 5, 1955
This work represents a further distancing from the original subject, now recognizable only if one is aware of his previous research, in the deforming grid inferred from Dutch studies. The constituent elements of this work also show a mastery of the poetics of color that Vanni is refining in his studies with Albers.
This painting is on the
threshold between research in
relationship with nature and a
new investigation that seeks verification of its own identity within itself.