Claudio Verna’s “Works on Paper” on Display at the Butti Museum in Viggiù
Claudio Verna’s “Works on Paper” on Display at the Butti Museum in Viggiù
Final anthological exhibition of the season in the Viale Varese galleries: 18 works on paper by the Abruzzese master on display. The opening is scheduled for Sunday, November 24 at 11:00 AM.
The first year of activity of the Museo Butti | Contemporanea, following the redevelopment of its new exhibition space, concludes with an anthological exhibition dedicated to the works on paper by painter Claudio Verna. The exhibition will open on Sunday, November 24 (11:00 AM) and will remain on view until January 26 in the galleries on Viale Varese.
The show is curated by conservator Veronica Zanardi and Professor Massimo Bignardi, author of the critical essay published
in the third catalog of “I quaderni del Butti.” On display will be 18 “works on paper” created from the late 1950s (black marker drawings), through the 1970s—when the artist turned to the use of pastels—and concluding with his most recent works from the first two decades of the new millennium.
Verna was born in Guardiagrele, in the province of Chieti, in 1937 and graduated in Florence with a thesis on “Figurative Arts in Industrial Civilization.” After his first exhibitions in Florence, he moved to Rome in 1961 and still resides in the capital. A prominent figure of so-called “analytical painting,” his work “develops between the poles of extreme rigor and intense emotional abandon.” The undisputed protagonist of his paintings is color and its ability to embody the highest values of saturation and light.
Over the course of his career, the Abruzzese artist has held more than 120 solo shows and numerous anthological exhibitions, including notable ones at the Venice Biennale (1970 and 1980). At the same time, he has taken part in group exhibitions and international shows in Düsseldorf, London, Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Darmstadt, Cologne, Moscow, Leningrad, Grenoble, Nice, Prague, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and in many Italian cities, earning various accolades.
In 2008, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded him the “Antonio Feltrinelli” Prize for painting. He was later named an Academician of San Luca, and in 2010 the Catalogue Raisonné of his work was published, edited by Volker W. Feierabend and Marco Meneguzzo.
Massimo Bignardi writes of him: “The pastel technique shortens the distance between the hand, the fingers, and the surface of the paper. Eliminating any additional ‘prosthesis’ allows for a greater push into the impalpable space of the white sheet. It is no coincidence that Verna compares the pastel technique to modeling clay: it is not a simplification to better explain a technical fact. Rather, I believe it expresses an actual sensation—feeling the color-matter in a mental space, where the scale of volumes relies on the nearness or distance of emotional states. In fact, it is the artist himself who encourages such reflection, when he states in a text titled How I Paint, published in the journal Quaderni di Arte Contemporanea in 2010: ‘I have always believed’—he writes—‘that culture, thought, and lived experiences, at a certain point, become part of your very nature and allow you to capture impulses that come from deep within, perhaps having remained obscure for a long time.’”
The exhibition Claudio Verna. Works on Paper will be open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 2:00 PM to 6:30 PM; on Sundays, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. Reservations are recommended via the museum’s official website.
