Claudio Verna
Claudio Verna is one of the leading exponents of "analytical painting", a trend that took shape in Italy between the 1960s and 1970s, in synergy with the theoretical work of the critic Filiberto Menna: a courageous third way between the conceptual categorical imperative and the explosion pop energy. Refounding painting, within its own exclusive field, was the main mission. Beyond narration, representation, symbol and meaning, the material essence of painting became crucial.
And therefore what counted was the canvas, the colour, the sign, the material, the experience inside the painting, between analysis, research and intuition. A philosophical journey towards the origin, in which linguistic and media self-referentiality was equivalent to a need for purity.
Hence the extreme rigor, the careful work with the surfaces, the predilection for monochromes, the geometricism and the gestures that are not already expressive, but reflective.
Over the years celebrated by national and international galleries and museums for his fundamental role in defining a cultured and radical line of Italian abstraction, Claudio Verna has pursued a powerful synthesis between emotional openness and iron organization of forms. The luminous element dominates his compositions – “light determines the figures, somehow grounds them: without light things wouldn't be in the dark, they simply wouldn't exist”* - letting chance, contradictions and error put the complete structure of the canvas in vibration. A painting that becomes the phenomenology of color and that is both intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Radiant, strictly.
