Atmospheric Colours

Erminio Tansini uses atmospheric colours, deep pastes that are worked mainly with a spatula as if he wanted – in his meticulous search for accords and harmonious movements – to press internal lumps, and undo knotted, tangled sensations and emotions by re-arranging them and exploring their tickness and reverberations. His painting has lost touch, once and for all, with the reality he wants to depict and is now pure material, “material-space” that rings with expressiveness and his personal modulations, at one moment rhythmic with short beats of light, then suddenly more melodic with long notes, at times circular, with the settings ordred by their brightness. Tansini re-evokes and restores the magic of Informal with a heightened sense that visually crosses the material and listens to the vibrations that permeate from below; from within, from the depths that are hinted and felt the moment he starts painting, as if he was creating a space that could feel the echoes and chromatic modelling.

Tansini’s work stands out for his excellent chromatic sensibilities and the ingenuity behind his composition. He ranges from poetry by Fautrier and De Staël to Burri’s material dramatisations, no longer structuring the colour with a figural syntax and external visual references, but rather by “figures of the soul”, constructions and rythms that belong solely to his inner world and to which we are able to listen “listen” as if we were at a musical audition. We can appreciate the joyous harmonies and marvel at the depths they descend to or the heights they reach, always taking us with them. Indeed, with the music’s same immediacy and simplicity, Tansini captures and absorbs our gaze and perception, accompanying us inside and beyond the succulent and variegated surface of this painting. It is as if we are really within his bright, mood-filled spaces, imbued with fresh gestures, that have complete control over the quantaty, shades, stamps and lengths, they even control the tracks that the gesture leaves in its wake, as well as the ripples in the material and striations that complicate the two levels and bring forth additional reflections and vibrations. Nothing is random or gratuitous, although surprises and unexpected abound within the material – and in particular within the colour. Not only Tansini is fully aware of what he is doing, both in his work and his research, but he also knows how to relate it directly, without hesitation to the existential condition. He elevates it to the level of his own humanity as a general point of reference and is also aware of the need for constant renewal. He himself said harmony “between the art of living and the lump it has become, tangled in fantasy, imagination, rationality and consciousness of reality”.

Giorgio Segato

Drawn from: Giorgio Segato (c. by), Transvisionismo. Pittura e scultura del vedere oltre, Panda Edizioni, Padua 2002, p. 179.