At the age of twenty-five he worked in his mother’s fishmonger’s shop, until 1970 when he decided to devote himself, self-taught, to the technique of embossing and chiselling on copper plates, using drawings by painters and architects as models.
After some research he began a new phase in which he created personal works in the round.
Her first solo exhibition was held in August 2013 to great public acclaim and press interest.
The introduction of the catalogue “La via del rame”, edited by Lucia Rossi, talks about Danilo, the techniques and the material he uses for the realization of his works: “To walk the path of Copper by Danilo Vitali is a new and singular experience because the encounters are unpredictable and new, but at the same time it is an ancient and plural experience, as it is thousands of years old. It is the history of this metal that was used since the beginning of civilization; its Cu symbol and name in various languages derive from the island of Cyprus, due to the rich deposits there, and Venus was called upon by alchemists, as Cyprus was sacred to this goddess.
He began working in the workshop of the tinsmith Antonio Carnovali, known as “Toléé” Here he learned the first notions of sheet metal working.
But Danilo Vitali’s path is also a very personal one, the result of a long process of practice, research, study, but above all of work; craftsmanship made of burins, hammers, chisels, which transformed the artist’s own hands into tools in turn, to engrave, beat and cut, burnish, grind, silver, heat, flame and weld to transform and bend a mineral material into new forms, the result of observation, experience and human creativity.
On this Copper Road you will encounter multiple forms of plant, animal and abstract nature.
It is certainly a metallic nature, but no less ‘natural’ for that reason, just as natural as art is and artistic as nature is, made up of flocks of lake twait shads and turquoise blue and rusty purple irridescent fish that cross the surface; of aquarium planes and flights of silver carp that dart at the breath of the turned page; of goats with semitic faces, wet from the rain.
Of tortoises that walk slowly along this millenary path, of birds with soldered plumage that chirp on copper wires, of roosters that wait firm and strutting. An owl with a body of bluish foils and a head of verdigris threads stares at us through empty orbits: it could take its metallic flight into the leaden night and leave the page empty…
On this unpredictable, surprising, personal and universal path of Copper, one encounters carved wrecks, sculpted nets and sculptures of cutouts, groups. Bundles of asparagus, standing proud, metal artichokes and blooms of honey mushrooms; scythes of almost lunar pumpkins, autumn vine shoots, cabbages that have felt the frost, cacti, pine cones and pomegranates. There is a fig tree, which looks like a crucifix, but whose copper branches throw out leaves and fruit.”
Vitali Archives Works
