Vanni Viviani (1937-2002) - A viviani Magritte

Vanni Viviani was born in 1937 in the province of Mantua, in San Giacomo delle Segnate. In Bolzano he began his artistic activity, initially focused on painting and sculptural figuration, and in the 1970s he moved to Milan, the capital of European art, where he felt the need to move from the collectivity of sheaves to the individuality of the “Apple”, an allusive and erotic symbol, a fruit of religions, fairy tales, science and heroes, which evokes important moments of the past—from the Golden Apple of Paris to the religiosity of Piero della Francesca—to end with Magritte-like surrealism, with the apple as a symbol of life, of sensuality, a place of ideas. The critics followed him with growing interest in his creative trajectory; Mario De Micheli says of him: “Viviani, a prodigious gardener of an uncorrupted orchard”; Renzo Margonari, “Viviani does not paint apples but human nudes.” It is in 1988 that Viviani leaves the old Bohemian Brera district of Milan to return to the countryside and to his Virgilian origins: he invents Villa Ca di Pom, densifies with meanings his work, materializes his universe in the conquest of his most intimate identity. And it is precisely the “pom” - the apple – the subject of the works in the Foundation BAM collection: 38 canvases of significant size, a stained glass window and a polychrome maiolica, all kept in the vault. Not to be forgotten, in 2002, the last great antologic exhibition “Pom Aria”, at the Fruttiere of Palazzo Te in Mantua, which synthesizes his artistic life, from the sheaves to the apples, to end with large hollowed iron sheet sculptures, which highlight in the negativity of representation the “Soul” of his characters from Adam to Daphne and the Totemic Angels.