by Alessandra Redaelli

The color catches you, hypnotizes you, overwhelms you. Inside, the reading of the images happens at a later moment, when the emotions, in some way, calm down. Since Carlo Vercelli's paintings touch sensations before the brain: they make your heart beat. Mark Rothko made it his own mission: to remove everything that could distract the viewer from the pure emotion, to create with painting a magical bridge between the heart of the artist and the viewer’s one. Away with the sign of the brushstroke, away with the pasty material of the painting: only the color moves forwards, advances, spreads, invades the senses. A similar path to the one of another great abstract expressionist, Helen Frankenthaler. She had invented a unique method to give to her painting an aquatic and transparent character: she called it "spot imbibition" obtained by diluting the oil with turpentine to make it similar to watercolor and then letting it drip onto the canvas stretched down on the floor through a can with a hole in the bottom. Then, with the sponge and the brush, she began to tame that sort of lake, calm, controlled, letting the material follow its own paths, preparing to accept that the painting could reveal itself before her eyes according to unexpected and surprising logics. But Carlo Vercelli is an artist of his age. Although he defines himself as a son of the tradition of abstract expressionism, he loves the figure, he loves the narrative taking place on canvas. And in fact, as soon as we recover from the first dizziness and blink, we start to see that inside that rising wave a world is moving. These silhouettes are so light that it is difficult to identify them at a first sight. But then, slowly, in a game of discovery, we realize that in a few brushstrokes they can tell us stories. They are stories of loneliness and expectations, of meditations, and sometimes of encounters. Sometimes it is necessary to look at the work a second, a third time to realize that that brushstroke is the profile of a back, or that that small, very small black spot is a figure sitting with knees to chest. They move on mysterious scenarios built on multiple levels, on perspectives whose rules get lost in an alien math, which does not belong to us and yet, we somehow can understand it with our heart. We can read on the bottom the outline of a tree, the top, perhaps, of a mountain covered by snow. We can invent a lawn, a bench, a stair, a byzantine dome, a wild bull, and the ruin of a sighting tower on a promontory. Our brain leaves for a dreamlike ride that from Rorschach’s spots (a psychological test used to read the character through the interpretation of abstract shapes) leads us a bit deeper in ourselves in a path of free associations. We feel an undefined delight, a fulfilment, as if meeting something expected. And meanwhile we find out that thin contour line, accurate, never casual, used to limit the strength of a color which could otherwise explode, invade everything. Around it, to isolate that nucleus of pure poetry from the rest, there is the white, virgin, untouched area. Carlo Vercelli loves painting. He loves it deeply, viscerally. Nevertheless, in his warm, overwhelming proceeding, apparently controlled by instinct, there is a strong planning element, which allows him to keep control on his work and to be always in balance between esprit de finesse e esprit de géométrie, between heart and mind. Just consider the origin of his artworks. In fact, each one of his oil on canvas comes from the evolution of a watercolor where Vercelli gives over to the pure gusto of painting, to the wild joy of the spreading color. Then, once the initial base is transferred on canvas, he works with oil, the detail, the possibility of a new point of view. Defined by titles which help the viewer to give a direction to the reading of the artwork, but without imposing a fixed interpretation, these paintings of the last period are the most recent outcome of a long path of research around color and figure. A path with clear growth steps, different from one another and nevertheless deeply coherent. If it is true that in the Eighties and Nineties landscapes the artist needed to fill up the canvas, to build the setting by perspective and traditional views, there are some works (a moving Deposition of 1984, a Barber of Sevilla of 1985, isolated and statuesque like a Innocenzo X by Francis Bacon) which already have in them the seed of the wide and powerful brushstroke of the latest works. And the path proceeds through time following a parameter of formal simplification aimed to get to the nucleus, to the essence. In the early Two-Thousands figures emerge from scratched sceneries, reduced to a few lines which can though express the solidity of a young feminine body, such as the expression of a quiet melancholy. Solitary figures, maybe just outlined in a contour that gives to the upper part of the body the definition of the detail, but then melting, disappearing into an unfinished intrigue. They’re psychological portraits filled with empathy, where just the arching of a shoulder can communicate the feeling of an unbearable fatigue where among the flows of a background all played on whites - like a d’après by Berthe Morisot - a curtain softly tied by a tape allows us to feel the consistency of the fabric. Female figure dominates, not as and not only following a tradition that sees women - even through the nude - as one of the natural main characters of painting: in Carlo Vercelli you can sense a sort of homage, a loving gaze coming from family events that make him read the feminine with a rare empathy, with a precious skill to understand their soul. Between 2017 and 2020 backgrounds gradually break free from the environmental implication to create a gallery of full-length portraits that emerge as characters of a comedy, figures in search of an author painted with very few brushstrokes, with a low chromatic rate and a transparency that often make them look like phantasmatic presences, evanescent, almost evocative. If in the Flagellation of 2018 there is still the sky trying to comfort the solitary figure, the arms swallowed by the body as in a mutilation, Elizabeth (2019) is a single flow of green color from which emerges a very detailed face, the makeup and even the shape of the earring. If Agata and The smoker (both of 2019) give to the sole pouring of bitumen the task of showing us a silhouette - and it’s about silhouettes telling us about ancient clothes, puffy skirts and elegant redingote - Margot (2020) is just a face that emerges for stains, almost a shroud, and the Dandy (2020, too) is a single brushstroke that tangles on itself, but so clear in its path that we can see a head and a bent arm. This total mastery gives origin to the visions that enchant us nowadays, the rampant spots of color that hypnotize us in search of a detail offering us an explanation, the head of the knot that allows a possible reading, a way in. Here is the Calvary of the Artist, where the gold and red color comfort the suggestion of the crucifixion; here is Scenography, where through the open scenes of a theater we can imagine Juliet waiting at the window or dancing Harlequins; here is the red muleta in the hands of a bullfighter in España; here is a fragile, delicate female figure, perhaps a prisoner in a glass cage, in the foreground of the Illusions Park. And then here is My Liguria, where the abstract backgrounds, in the radiance of light, can communicate the lapping of the sea, the soft breeze, and that smell emanated by the pines, the olive trees, the strawberry tree when the sun shines on it, that hot smell, full, that pinches the nostrils and warms the heart.

Carlo Vercelli was born in Savona in 1956. He moved to Milan with his father after the death of his mummy, at the age of 10. After his diploma at high school in arts maturity and his degree in painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, his academic career continues with his continuous attendance at the Famiglia Artistica Milanese, where the Scapigliatura Lombarda was born, and where he is in contact big artists of the ’70’s, such as the sculptors Eros Pellini and Renzo Zacchetti, the designer Mario Uggeri, who contribute to making his life full of nuances, both in color and in greyscale, just like the oils and temperas that he imprints on canvases with decisive and energetic brushstrokes. His works are an authentic visual diary, a sort of journey to discover a constantly changing universe, reread in a personal expressive key. An approach that reveals profound subjective research, but also the desire to convey an intimate message rich in values. His discrete character makes him prefer brushes and hands which he defines as "his primary tools" instead of words. The artist draws on the tradition of new figuration. The abstract visual elements are then manipulated and contaminated to get to figurative expression. Over the last few years he has also enriched his experience as a critic and art historian, bringing art to radio broadcasts and direct social media. He has organized several collective and personal exhibitions.



Education:

• High school degree in arts, Milan
• Degree in painting at Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan

• 1985: Milan, “la difesa della mia mente” (the defence of my mind) Galleria Il Mercante, (solo exhibition);
• 1989: Garbagnate Milanese, Villa Gianotti, (solo exhibition);
• 2010: Milan, Le Barrique, (solo exhibition);
• 2011: Garbagnate Milanese, Io ti guardo, (I am watching you) Corte Valenti, (solo exhibition);
• 2014: Garbagnate Milanese, Collezione donna, (Woman collection) Galleria La Saletta, (solo exhibition);
• 2017: ATA Hotel Varese, con Passepartout (4 artist exhibition);
• 2018: April Galleria Oldrado da Ponte, Lodi, (solo exhibition);
• 2019: Venice, october 1-15: “Il labirinto delle emozioni”, (the labirinth of emotions) with Visioni Altre Gallery (solo exhibition);
• 2019: Spinea VE, Villa Simion oratory, october 25 – november 10, “Il labirinto delle Emozioni”, (the labirinth of emotions) with Visioni Altre Gallery (solo exhibition);
• 2020: February 15 – 29: Milan, antological exhibition with Passepartout Unconventional Gallery (solo exhibition with about 60 piece of arts);
• 2022: November: Milan, Galleria d’Arte Bagutta, with Aroundart (2 artist exhibition);
• 2022: November: Padua, Arte Padova;
• 2023: March: Milan, Studio Zecchillo, ex Piero Manzoni, (solo exhibition);
• 2023: April: Savona, Visionarietà cromatiche, (cromatic visions) with Gulli Arte, (solo exhibition);
• 2023: June/July: Bassano del Grappa VI, Palazzo Bonaguro: Percorsi paralleli: l’arte e le sue visioni, (Parallel paths: arts and its visions), (4 artist exhibition);