Vainer Marconi was the first engraver to cross the threshold of the newly founded Laboratorio F.lli Manfredi way back in 1986. Over the years the portfolio of his many prints, which were kept because they were simply beautiful, has grown considerably and some of these are that we want to show today. Marconi is a precious yet shy fruit of that "Po Valley" school of engraving which gave so many important branches to the Morandi and Manaresi tree. He arrived and arrives with several plates at a time, for a few copies each. No need for proof, a sign of maximum expertise in the drawing and in the bites: each of his plates has never needed further interventions, despite the fact that Marconi does not have a personal press with which to verify. And it was also the first for which I felt the desire to write my testimony. 

All the works presented, often with a dedication to the printer, are one of three artist's proofs printed in addition to any subsequent print run.

https://www.laboratoriofratellimanfredi.it/antologia/1/Appunti+per+V.+Marconi+-+Nicola+Manfredi%2c+1992

N. A. Manfredi, maggio 2024

Marconi Vainer, engraver, sculptor, painter, was born in 1949 in Villa Seta in Cadelbosco Sopra. Graduated from the Gaetano Chierici art school in Reggio Emilia, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna obtaining a degree in the painting course in 1973 under the guidance of Pompilio Mandelli and in 1977 a degree in the sculpture course under the guidance of Quinto Ghermandi, in the meantime following engraving courses with Paolo Manaresi. Over the years there have been numerous exhibitions of drawings, engravings, paintings, sculptures and works for public and private clients; in 1991 he donated a large number of engravings for the prints cabinet to the Panizzi Library in his city. Since 1997 he has been included in the repertoire of Italian engravers "Edit Faenza" with presentation by Paolo Bellini. Since 1987 he has assiduously dedicated himself to the technique and poetics of etching. His engraved work consists of more than 500 plates.

...adopting an analytical methodology, he enhanced the chiaroscuro and luministic complexity of the composition, and highlighted the undertones, implications and references of a reality seen not so much in its essential elements but in its material depth. The cuts in the horizon, the atmospheres, the naturalistic presences whose moments of disintegration are captured in the slow and inexorable action of time, never depend on interventions entrusted to chance, but are the fruit of a highly controlled sign in all its aspects intricate paths. Marconi dangerously loves investigations into the wreck, the trunk of the tree abandoned on the ground, the shell... in which one captures the sense of the dissolution of death, not in terms of apocalypse or tragedy, but as a Darwinian transition from one stage to another of life, which continues in an inscrutable endless flow. And in this research he develops all the potential of etching which, since the time of Rembrandt, has been the most suitable technique for obtaining, through the controlled action of acids, the careful use of bites and the precise and rapid drawing with the tip of steel, a fullness of rendering and pictorial effects, down to the most impalpable softness and the most delicate nuances in an aura of mystery. (A.Gianolio)

Marconi Vainer lives and works in Reggio Emilia in via Austria, 16. Telephone number: 3703174350. E-mail: vainermar1949@libero.it