LIFE BEYOND FIRST CLASS
ARTS & COLLECTIBLES
PAINTING AS
BREATH
Carlo Vanchieri’s abstract paintings unite five decades of material mastery with a philosophy of openness, offering collectors works of enduring rhythm, depth, and contemplative power.
REGINA RUSSO
To encounter the work of Carlo Vanchieri is to step into a state of suspension, where painting ceases to behave as an object and instead becomes an atmosphere. Born and based in Palermo, Sicily, Vanchieri’s sensibility was shaped by a city layered with Byzantine mosaics, Arab architecture, and Norman grandeur, a place where history does not recede but accumulates. That density of memory remains embedded in his work, informing an approach that treats art not as a product, but as a way of living.
Vanchieri began studying art in the early seventies, a period charged with ideological and cultural ferment. From the outset, his ambition was not merely technical fluency, but coherence. “Palermo is a city that has left traces of all the historical stages of humanity,” he reflects. “By absorbing this energy, the project becomes continuous, and the conditions are born for creating new things that push towards the future.” His practice has always aimed toward continuity, a sustained internal path that allows him to see from multiple perspectives and, as he often describes it, to rise above things long enough to get some air, to breathe.
Quadrotto, 2023, Oil on Canvas, 50x50cm
Somale, 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60x50 cm
His formal training is both rigorous and expansive. He received his degree of Maestro d’Arte from the Regional Art Institute of Bagheria, followed by a degree in Applied Art from the Public Art Institute of Palermo. Initially drawn almost instinctively to drawing, his early years were shaped by figure studies, still lifes, and drapery rendered freehand. A decisive turning point came through his work in metal arts, particularly glazing on red copper, which introduced him to color and guided him toward painting as a primary language.
That evolution unfolded gradually. Early works translated collected eastern foulards into flat pictorial fields, favoring plain compositions and avoiding central subjects. Even then, the paintings resisted containment, always suggesting continuation beyond the frame. From there emerged long horizontal and gently undulating bands, marking his transition toward abstraction. Movement became freer, rhythm more pronounced, and conceptual thinking increasingly central.
Abbracci, 2009, acrylic on canvas. 120x60 cm
Waska,Waska,
oil and tissue paper on canvas,
96 cm diameter
For nearly two decades, Vanchieri has refined a distinctive technique incorporating tissue paper directly into oil painting. Applied and absorbed into the surface, the tissue creates depth and texture while ultimately appearing as pure oil. The result is deceptively subtle. What initially reads as chromatic harmony reveals itself over time as a complex negotiation between surface and structure, intuition and control.
His abstractions do not declare. They invite. Forms expand outward rather than resolve inward, creating a sense of boundless extension. “For me, the work is a whole,” Vanchieri says. “I move in all directions, going outwards, as if mentally continuing even outside the support itself.” Color operates rhythmically rather than symbolically, producing compositions critics have described as joyful, optical, and almost musical in their cadence.
Egitto, 2022, oil on canvas, 64x54 cm
Advisory, Vanchieri’s work is increasingly positioned within an international collecting context that values depth over trend.
Why should collectors seek out Carlo Vanchieri’s work now? Because sustained vision matters. Because fifty years of disciplined inquiry produces a language that does not waver. Because these paintings do not exhaust themselves on first viewing. They reward time. They reveal new relationships with repetition. In a market often driven by immediacy, Vanchieri offers something rarer, continuity.
His paintings are not about answers. They are about space. Space to pause. Space to breathe. Space to return. And in that return lies their lasting power.
www.chrissymoore.art/artists/carlo-vanchieri
https://vanchieriartist.jimdofree.com
https://www.artsy.net/partner/chrissy-moore-art-advisory/artists#carlo-vanchieri
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