Claudio Verna biography

Claudio Verna, born in 1937 in Guardiagrele, in the province of Chieti, is an Italian painter recognized as a key figure and founder of the artistic movement "Pittura Analitica". His artistic education took shape in Umbria and took shape at the University of Florence, where he graduated in 1961 with a thesis on " Figurative arts in industrial civilization ". In Florence, he had the opportunity to establish significant contacts with exponents of classical abstractionism and other painters, starting his career with significant exhibitions.
Having moved to Rome in 1961, Claudio Verna spent a few years in a phase of experimentation and autonomous definition of his artistic career, before returning to exhibit in 1967. This period marks his belief in the "ancient and indispensable reasons" of painting, leading to the birth of Analytical Painting, a movement that reflects on contemporary art and its relationship with modern tradition.
Claudio Verna's work stands out for its mature expressiveness, characterized by an extreme rigor and an intense emotional abandonment. Color is the dominant element in his paintings, exploring saturation and light. His personal exhibitions have reached impressive numbers, over one hundred, both in Italy and abroad, with significant participations such as the Venice Biennale and exhibitions in renowned museums.
At an international level, Claudio Verna he has been a constant presence in collective exhibitions and reviews, receiving various awards, including the prestigious "Antonio Feltrinelli" Award for painting from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 2008 and the nomination to National Academician of the Accademia di San Luca. In 2010, the Catalog Raisonné of his work was published, edited by Volker W. Feierabend and Marco Meneguzzo.
Claudio Verna's painting, since the 1950s, has stood out for its gestuality of contained energetic tension and of explicit chromatic value, characterized by red, yellow, orange, gray tones and flashes of green. His primary vocation is revealed in the investigation of the qualities of color, ranging from the chromatic compositions of the 1960s to a rigorous abstraction in the following years.
Claudio Verna was an authoritative protagonist in the renewal of painting, conducting coherent artistic research and significantly connected to aesthetic reflection and the values ​​of tradition and contemporaneity. His theoretical and practical approach has always reaffirmed the specificity of pictorial language, standing out in a scene dominated by cold resets and sophisticated conceptual tautologies.
In the 1970s, his work underwent a transformation, with the surface of the canvases it becomes the theater of new color-light emotions, creating images of high formal quality. His works are often divided into plots of signs measured in gesture and broken in rhythm, where color explodes in skilful agreements.
Claudio Verna, living and working in Rome, has continued to be a central figure in the artistic panorama, with the his style which has gone through various phases and seen evolutions in the visual language. His art was fundamental in encouraging a return to painting and in valorising its constituent elements. His rich and varied career has left an indelible mark on the world of contemporary art, evidenced by a body of work that he continues to influence and inspire.