Niele Toroni

Born in the picturesque town of Muralto-Locarno, Switzerland, in 1937, Niele Toroni is an artist whose groundbreaking practice has left an indelible mark on the world of contemporary art. Toroni's accolades include the Rubens Prize of the City of Siegen (2017), the Prix Meret Oppenheim (2012), the Wolfgang Hahn Prize in Cologne (2003), among others

Niele Toroni's Art Style

At the heart of Toroni's practice is a method he pioneered known as "Travail-Peinture." He initiated this practice in 1966. This technique involves applying brushstrokes using imprints of a no. 50 paintbrush, repeated at perpendicular 30-centimeter intervals. This method debuted in 1967 at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture in the Musèe d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Concurrently, Toroni co-founded the BMPT (art group) alongside Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, and Michel Parmentier.

Spanning diverse surfaces like canvas, newspaper, cloth, gallery walls, and floors, Toroni's creations serve as both paintings and painterly interventions within space. Every mark holds its own identity, yet collectively, they embody uniformity, altering the perception of space and fostering a realm where formal tensions between consistency and variation, repetition and spontaneity, come to the fore.