Published by Galleria d’Arte “Sant’Isaia”

This catalog was published on the occasion of my solo exhibition in 1997 at the historic Galleria d’Arte “Sant’Isaia” in Bologna, managed by Grisliano Bonacini. The exhibition marked a significant milestone, showcasing a collection of landscapes and seascapes deeply rooted in the Italian en plein air tradition.

The catalog features an introductory quote by Leonardo da Vinci and a profound critical essay by art critic Stefano Santuari, who explores the relationship between the Post-Macchiaioli legacy and modern impressionist expression, highlighting the search for light, color, and absolute atmospheric synthesis.

Introduction by Master Giulio Da Vicchio:

“I have known Agostino Veroni for many years. When he first came to ask for my advice, he was little more than a boy. I was struck by his enthusiasm and by the questions he subsequently asked in his continuous desire to experiment with new technical solutions of different natures.

The first results were excellent and already gave a glimpse of the qualities necessary to make his way. He has already traveled a long way, having acquired, in a short time, an extremely appreciable ease of brushwork.

He loves painting from life (en plein air) as the Livornese school teaches, succeeding in creating excellent paintings that have the quality of pleasing. This combination of talents is the premise for an excellent success that will surely grow more and more over the years.”

— Giulio Da Vicchio

Critical Essay by Stefano Santuari:

“Look at the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it again: what you see of it now was not there before, and what was there before is no more. Who is it that remakes it, if the maker dies continuously?” — Leonardo da Vinci

Moving past the recent denigration of how the ‘Macchiaioli’ have been used, both in the past and still today, the fundamental lesson remains the same: to direct painting towards the essentiality of color and relationships. A painting that gives sound to the image to the very edge of astigmatic blurring, in order to pass unharmed through the traps of reality, of the real object. Ultimately, what unites the Post-Impressionists and the Post-Macchiaioli is a single aesthetic: the tension of simplification. The simplicity, clarity, and regularity that the ‘macchia’ (the patch of color) implies is the cornerstone of this pictorial structure. At times, the contrasts of tone slip out of line or record this longed-for placidity of color too horizontally. Avoiding these foundations, these counterweights, as they are linked to the expansion of the ‘macchia,’ risks what Chastel, in defining Boldini’s art, called a ‘nervous brushstroke of superficial elegance.’
However, we return to the en plein air, that is, to the incessant struggle between space and surface, between air and color.
Agostino Veroni fits into this congenial soil like a glove—and reading the words of his master Da Vicchio, almost genetically. In his paintings, the space destined to hold the atmosphere is already fixed; the colors of the air follow.
His brushstroke is quiet but not slow. In certain transparencies, it opens up to the utmost lyrical suspension, like a delightful little note repeated to infinity. The same happens with certain seascapes: a touch more or a touch less would ruin everything.
Thus, once again, it is a matter of controlling the medium and, as in all modern art, reversing its relationships.
Veroni is not an artist subordinated to the object, even if he desires it intensely; rather, it is the object that is inclined to the canvas and to the will of his perception.
There is little use for certain scholars who confine the sociological circle of the historical roots of this painting within the narrow walls of a national or even ‘democratic’ character.
Until proven otherwise, Impressionism was only beginning to babble when the revolution of the ‘macchia’ was reaching the absolute peak of its masterpieces and, therefore, its formal completion. Dates are not mere whispers in art history. Thus, we have a painting that, transcending all regionalism or dialect, takes upon itself the responsibility of the greatest legacy of nineteenth-century art within the narrative of the image. The sources of this legacy still flow with precision within these country landscapes and dreamlike seascapes by Agostino Veroni.
There is in him a will—at once serene and desperate—never to sacrifice the formal aspect, because it is felt as the moral beauty of the destiny of painting. Therefore, the material must be explored and conditioned by light, and light by color and its variables, which make it almost an ineffable entity. At times, existence in Veroni’s painting seems to manifest as a fluttering of petals, like a garden recomposed according to wise rituals. What creates structure, or presence (‘astanza’), in Veroni is the meeting between the lines of the subjects, which are fixed, and the light that shapes or dissipates them. In the extravagant universe that is the history of painting—or the history of ghosts, as the root of Western culture—Veroni has taken the confident step of choosing his own path, playing at ease within it.
In the century following the death of art decreed by Hegel, we recall how the philosopher himself admitted that the prevalence of discursive knowledge had led to the sterility of knowledge itself. What then should be the task of true art, and of painting in particular, if not to lead the concept (which today has become a theology of technology) back to the image, and therefore to freedom?
What is more free than play, than this game? And what is more strictly determined by rules, if not play?
Let us learn to look at the world and invent it, reconfirming it. Veroni gives us a hand.”

— Stefano Santuari