FRANCO VIOLA
Rethinking Nature
Initially influenced by the expressionism of Nolde, Kirchner and Munch, and later by the abstract expressionism of the New York School. Franco Viola dissects his graphically and seismographically contoured landscapes into the basic elements of light and color.
His interest in Mark Rothko’s lyrical abstraction and the luminous power of Rothko’s colors, as well as in Clyfford Still’s concept of the sublime, find expression in his form of “color field painting.” In this rediscovery and reinvention of nature, Viola also finds his personal painterly idiom, which links Caspar David Friedrich with American modernism.
Viola´s painterly gesture follows his immediate analyses of the nature of modernist painting, which reflect the upheavals of human consciousness and society and record the contemporary situation of altered movements of perception and emotions.
Works of Viola were recently shown at the State Museum for Contemporary Art in Thessalonica, at the Art Hall in Bremen, and at the Civic Museum Castello di Masnago, Varese.
Plans call for “Rethinking Nature” to be shown in Berlin and Moscow.
