 Vaninetti:"About Myself and My Painting"
Raffaele De Grada, 1966,1987, 1989
Wolfgang Hildesheimer, 1966
Nazareno Fabretti, 1961, 1972
Luigi Santucci, 1972
Sigrid Genzken, 1972
Walter Birnbaum,1975
 Enzo Fabiani, 1985, 1987
Gritzko Mascioni, 1985,1987
Vaninetti and his fellow-villagers
Giulio Spini, 1960, 1997
Camillo De Piaz, 1960
Piergiuseppe Magoni, 1972
Giancarlo Grillo, 1970
Ferruccio Scala, 1960
Mario Garbellini, 1970
Franco Monteforte, 1976
Luigi Festorazzi, 1985
Guido Scaramellini, 1986, 2005
Carlo Mola, 1988
Eugenio Salvino, 1988
Arnaldo Bortolotti, 1993
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Enzo Fabiani, 1985, 1987
Are Angelo Vaninetti's paintings records of a time - lost or otherwise irretrievably threadbare or fading away? Yes, they are. Still, their true value lies less in this quality than in the way those objects and those views unfold before our eyes. Such a participating and deep way as to turn them, through painting, into the "words" of a throbbing, genuine poetic discourse, then a universal one. This is the crucial, almost excruciating point the free, truthful testimony by a man to his cheerful or miserable reality and his world. Vaninetti gives this testimony with the authority of an artist who more or less consciously nourished on ancient and new vital juices , bearing ancient moans and recent wars, decadences as well as stubborn hopes in his bewildered soul. Almost miraculously he succeeds in expressing all that, even on the small canvas, even when painting a yellowing bowl or a lamp that gives out no light. Still, any shadow of repetition, traditionalism, fancied past, or whatever, readily disappears when a given form of art (figurative art in our case) luckily goes on to live and gets richer and richer, or is born anew. I mean that, if an artist is as genuine and true as Vaninetti ("You're brave, you're strong", Alberto Giacometti told him), then any limitation vanishes and no dating really holds. That's just obvious.
One should also be reminded that Vaninetti's painting - so precise, mellow, and throbbing - is not-at-all a comfy painting. Quite the opposite, in fact: in the sense that it has more mystery, or mysteriousness, than in the case of several artists who, when dealing with similar themes (flowers, woodland, water streams and landscapes, whether Lombard or otherwise), often arrive at involved effects that by no means vibrate in depth. Not a comfortable painting. Nor a regular painter. Both have aroused interest and admiration in many prominent artists and men of letters (as is borne out by so many writings about Vaninetti), who have variously strived to approach, or have us approach Vaninetti and his works, his extraordinary human, yet fantasizing endowment, his qualities and his softness. Just think of certain paintings by Van Gogh to get a better understanding of Vaninetti pictorial achievements the way he strips a motif bare (sunflowers or a chair) to recreate it, to "leave" it alone and emblematic on the canvas, to tell its unique mystery, to reveal its form and its substance.
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