Experience is similar to science and art. Experience produces art, inexperience chance. GT

Giorgio Taverniti is a remarkable artist. Quiet, almost secretive, in the way he works, he has become a completely original abstract painter, who makes work of exquisite refinement. We tend to think of abstraction, as opposed to figuration, as a ‘liberated’ form of painting, where the painter is free to follow his own impulses, wherever they happen to lead him. Much abstract painting – not of course all – follows the example of the American Abstract Expressionists and is apparently produced with great rapidity. Taverniti chooses instead to forbid this kind of spontaneity. His paintings, if one looks closely, are minutely detailed, built up patiently from a myriad tint marks. Yet they do remain spontaneous – they have none of the formality of rigidly geometric abstraction. One part of the pleasure of looking at his paintings is their flawless elegance – they are never less than completely achieved. At the same time, however, one is aware of the pulse within his intricately inter-weaving forms, built up, with infinite patience, from tiny flecks of the brush. These paintings buzz, as a good garden does, with many forms of life.

Edward Lucie-Smith