| Claudio Verna     Claudio Verna was born in Guardiagrele (Chieti) in 1937. After going to school in Umbria from 1942 to 1956, he attended the University of Florence, graduating with a thesis in the Figurative Arts in Industrial Civilisation. He also held his first significant exhibitions in Florence, before moving to Rome in 1961. For several years, he held no exhibitions, preferring to be completely independent to experiment with and define his thinking and the tools of his research. He started showing again in 1967, by which time he was convinced once and for all of the “ancient and undeniable” reasons of painting. This was the period of “analytical painting”, whose aim was to stimulate thinking about making art today and how it relates to the modern tradition. Regaining its freedom of expression, from the mid-seventies Verna’s painting “oscillated between the poles of extreme rigour and intense emotional abandon”. Colour was the absolute protagonist of his paintings, with its ability to take on the maximum values of saturation. The sign and gesture typical of Verna’s work ever since his début at the end of the fifties were set to work to organise the space and identify “figures” outside all merely descriptive references. Among the more than eighty personal exhibitions he has held in Italy and abroad, his participations in the Venice Biennale in 1970, 1978 and 1980 are worthy of note. Verna has won several prizes, including the Acireale Award in 1968, the City of Gallarate Award in 1973 and again in 1995, the Michetta Award in 1973 and again in 1983 and the Suzzara Award in 1999. Anthological exhibitions of his works were organised by the Civic Museum of Gibellina in 1988, the Spoleto Municipal Gallery in 1994, the PAC in Ferrara in 1997, the Conegliano Municipal Gallery in Palazzo Sarcinelli in 1998 and the Casa dei Carraresi in Treviso in 2000. In 1976, Verna published an essay entitled Pittura (Painting) and, in 1985, the Institute of Art History at the University of Rome gathered the transcriptions of conversations held by him at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University and published them in a booklet, entitled Fare pittura (Making Painting). For several years now, Verna’s studio has been in Rapicciano di Spoleto, in Umbria.