Nanni Valentini. The origin of the "gauzes"
He presented the first "transparent canvases" at Art Cologne in 1975. It was on this occasion that his work was seen for the first time by Carla Pellegrini, a brilliant gallery owner out of key with following the latest trends, who decided to host his work in a one-man show in her Galleria Milano that opened on 20 May 1976. Valentini made them the protagonists of that exhibition.
In the early 1970s, Nanni Valentini began his iconic “Gauze” series, a pivotal moment in his artistic journey. This work was first publicly showcased in a 1976 solo exhibition at Galleria Milano, marking a key milestone in his creative evolution.
Called by various names in ordinary language, and with a wide margin of approximation, "filters" or "gauzes" are works made mainly from jute or wide-mesh gauze that does not present a compact surface to the light but allows it to filter through. A coat of paint in a predominant liquid tint of dark blue tending towards grey, or light blue, for a time of white (but in some cases the fabric is left coarse) gives them a transparent appearance, enhanced by the decision to solidify them and to hang them a few centimetres from the wall, so that they are luminous weaves above all else, forming an ensemble of filigrees capable of containing shadow.
prefer to think of things through a modulation of the same light that illuminates them rather than to believe that I will be the one to dwell in that light".
In his introductory text to the exhibition, Valentini wrote:
"This work is the result of an inquiry into the thickness of the gaze. This thickness is understood as a perceptive phenomenon and as the story of an attention. The painted canvas becomes transparent and having no perimeter other than its own. [...] Even if the works deliberately retreat from establishing an image, the gauze becomes a lamina. The monochrome colour too takes up the fact of the 'diffusion' and 'dispersion' of the luminous ray. The figures are derived from visual archetypes.
Catalogue of the 1976 exhibition at Galleria Milano
Valentini: "The distance of the fabric from the wall is a thickness, I have called it gaze because the gaze is a thickness. It is the search for the distance that I have fixed to be followed because an art that I have glimpsed frightens me. prefer to think of things through a modulation of the same light that illuminates them rather than to believe that I will be the one to dwell in that light".
Texts from "Nanni Valentini. Trasparenze", SilvanaEditoriale, 2022
Nanni Valentini debates with the critic Roberto Sanesi, Galleria Milano, Milano 1976
The 1976 exhibition at the Galleria Milano was the definitive turning point. They were transparent canvases hung and detached from the wall. In another room there were earthen floors. Heaven and earth, indeed. The crossing gaze and the blinded gaze. The eye and the hand: the visible and the tactile, and the fervid zone to explore between the visible and the tactile.
Flaminio Gualdoni in Nanni Valentini, SilvanaEditoriale, 2005
Walter Valentini, Nanni Valentini and Roberto Sanesi at Galleria Milano in 1976
