Andrea De Ranieri‘s paintings follow in a long tradition of Italian modernist design, his palette predominated by blues, blacks, whites, greys, with the occasional flicker of gold, his compositions simple and forthright while his materials are robust and durable.

Using everything from paint, wax, enamel and cement De Ranieri builds up the textures in his paintings to create stylish simple geometric forms that bang off each other, are forceful, their incompatibility creating a tension, a frisson of material and colour, a textural juxtaposition that provokes an immediate aural response. And while our subconscious is aware of the incongruity our eyes remain ignorant to the battle happening infront of us, each material assuming their own predestination, that their position on the picture plane is preordained.

This sense of permanence is given credence by De Ranieri’s use of building materials and solid shapes to build a solid concrete landscape of the imagination, a totality of urbanisation in which everything is controlled and defined. Nothing is free to express itself, the natural world subdued by the inhumanity of man and his materialistic triumph.

It’s this sense of control and absolutism that gives these paintings their power, their sense of unbreakability and impregnability. They will not give. They are unapologetic. To make work that is so muscular is a statement of intent, the work of a man on a mission to find an aesthetic that places him firmly in the 21st Century while acknowledging the masters of the past, designers, artists and architects that he studied while training as an industrial designer, architect and visual artist. Or as he puts it himself:

Following a versatile artistic training; from architecture university studies to industrial design, from sculpture to painting. experimentation, material, shape and colour. Chaotic overlapping layers of colour and material to reach minimalist clarity.