I. In the preface to the Japanese edition of The Art of Color, the painter Johannes Itten wrote: “To become a master of color, it is essential to study and assimilate each one, being aware at the same time of the infinite combinations that exist. among all".

For almost forty years, first in Vienna, then at the Bauhaus in Weimar, and other German and Swiss schools, Itten devoted himself to developing his theory of color. He painted, investigated and shared his artistic (and also spiritual) musings with his students, among whom were, for example, Klee and Kandisnky.

Itten has always been committed to experimentation, teaching and artistic production, the last two most probably understood as the same practice. Two objectives guided his work: to know the laws of form and to release the expressive potentialities of his students. Everything from the color.

II. While preparing the contents of a subject that she would dictate in a school of artistic education, Verónica Di Toro reviewed the ideas of the mystic Otto Runge, Wilhelm Oswald or the theory about the interaction of color by Josef Albers. This is how he began to make some grids in
paper with the contrasts of Itten.

There are moments that lead us to valuable discoveries and re-discoveries. In addition to deciding the different methods that would help students to use and think in terms of color, it was at this moment that, tired of the interplay of fittings and lines from her previous series (Puertas, 2015), Di Toro decided to abandon the investigation of the shape determined by the black line and concentrate on the color.

Itten determined that the contrasts were seven: contrast of the color itself, light-dark, warm-cold, complementary, simultaneous contrast, quantitative and qualitative. Describing each group would be extremely boring, I only present them because I find it fascinating that someone has taken the trouble to group them, and above all because when I see the new series of works by Di Toro I confirm that the logic of the system works ... although! eye! ... when painting the artist chooses to be guided by intuition (intuition trained after years of exercises on the subject) and forgets the rigor of all, absolutely all theories of color.

The artist's work does not obey any imperative related to the specific avant-garde programs with which her work tends to be related. Verónica Di Toro collects aspects of this tradition, also of op art, minimalism and plays. It satisfies an internal demand where color works as a vehicle for exploration, color is a whim. It is the stone that anchors, it is the element that, combined in all ways, brings it closer, brings us closer to the shore of infinity.

Lara marmor