VITTORIO AGOSTINI. Painter led by his instinct and by his basic great morality, which, on the canvas, manifests itself beginning from the purity of the sign. Somebody could smile — especially those who have lost their identity — at te need — a completely interior need - of this palette master to conciliate gestural expression, vision and memory during the visual research. Substantial, in these terms, is the painting in oils “Esplosione a Bordo” (Explosion on board), where the personal unconscious of the painter shows on the scene some infernal flames against a nocturnal sky, enlightened, from time to time, by blue, white or yellow spots. A sign tachisme of postimpressionist school, with a style recalling, I would say “at the Bonnard way”, but it is also informal as in the explosive action of the yellow colour. On the contrary, the ancient erection of “L’albero rosso” (The red tree) is steeped in a mythological atmosphere. whereas in “Le quattro stagioni” (The four seasons), Vittorio Agostini expresses his slow and carefully weighted sapience, through the global vision of the whole, reminding an idyllic memory. One of the compositions which better suit to this tension — face the sign and visual purity given by the unconscious and lied dormant memory — is represented by "Vortice” (Whirl). In this work of art, Vittorio Agostini does not fall into the academic school of the detail, but, on the contrary, he extends a great dramatic power to the whole sign composition. We should acknowledge that the perspective spaces created by this painter during his researches are not calculated, but absolutely instinctive. Sometimes Vittorio Agostini adds, in his compositions, figurative elements that are not relevant to the main subject, as, for instance, in the painting “Inno al Creato” (The Creation hymn). This work of art is the richest in foreign and mysterious sign elements inside the whole composition — a sort of indirect homage to the surreal oneirism of Salvador Dalì.

              Turin, 20th March 2002

                                                                                                   Prof. Paolo Levi — Art Critic

instinctive and visionary, delightfully rich in introspective starting points, the painting style of Vittorio Agostini, artist living in Villafranca, Iittle city in the province of Verona, beats about a creative expression which, step by step, could gradually mature at a mimetic pace of synchronic counterpoints whose emotional and emotive grasp is really unique.

Agostini has fully thought — and he still continues to think, in accordance with his tireless spirit of searcher —about his imaginative progress, drawing inspiration from both the tradition and the conceptual avant-gardes, in order to originate his own style and a fully personal conception of "art”, After due consideration, he came to a kind of programmatic document called “Manifesto of Gestualvisiomemorismo” written by his own hand, where he maintains that it is possible to catch the process through which “a vision of memory originates from the gestural expression”. This manifesto is organised in few more than a dozen points, and it is intended to be considered both from a personal and a prospective point of view, that is to say, as an example — thus not only as a sort of explication — of an expression of the art to which it is possible to refer and by which other painters, draftsmen or sculptors sharing the content, could be inspired. At the beginning of his manifesto, Agostini dwells on two main topics: signs and instinct, elements that, in a maieutic — pictorial framework, generate the primitive unity of the composition. Generally speaking, Vittorio maintains that he prefers the “spontaneity”, the “Iack of planning”, relying on his artistic instinct, and refusing to be conditioned — and this is why he wants to make it clear that he does not execute any preparative draft.

The “creation” as a practice — continues the text — is very cose to the mnemonic process, that is to say to the memory of experiences that are part of our past Iife, of our "already lived and experienced”, and that, far away from the present, can be revised, from a certain point of view, through the gestural expression of the painter. Hence it follows that Agostini needs to develop his works of art through a process called “in removing” (“Once detected a possible subject — says te painter at point four - work to emphasise and develop its idea, by eliminating the possible signs which are not useful for the final result.”)

Randomness, spontaneity, and gestural expressiveness are words which recur very frequently in the text, since they are certainly fundamental for a pictorial expression of the art which is both personal and complex Iike the one conceived by this eclectic artist.

Wondering about the origins and the developments of the art of this painter, we discover that he is, at the same time, up-to-date and contemporary, never affected, and trivial, or, even worse, organized by following a rnorality.

On the contrary, Agostini reveals a terrible capacity of combining, in the same work of art, aesthetic aspects and poetical raisons, messages and situations, fragrnents and mental frames, that, in his oil paintings (pigments that according to Agostini, “allow the artist to change the subject while approaching the final result”), mingle through unexpected and unforeseen, sometimes even unusual, assonances and concordances.

        Cremona, 28th March 2002

                                                                                               Doc. Simone Fappanni - Art Critic