Internationally recognized, American Artist John Varriano is best known for his multi-disciplinary mastery of the visual arts. His provocative body of work possesses that sublime ability to strike suddenly and deeply at one's inner being. Rich and robust colors seem to pop off the canvas while a magical melding of layers reveal carefully crafted, finely honed psychological examinations. 

Varriano’s figurative and portraiture paintings display an exceptional talent for delivering unabashed proclamations of the human condition. For Varriano, the blinding beauty of the subject matter is made more exquisite and whole by the dark and hidden material that lies beneath. It is always the shadows, materially and metaphorically, that allow one to see and experience the light.

Varriano’s command of abstract oil painting is otherworldly. He gives his audience a masterful outpouring of explosive forms, shapes, and textures counterbalanced by stark discipline, containment, and restrain. Varriano handles paint and the transmission of ideas with exceptional “Grace,” leading one to conclude the higher worlds he captures are his natural habitat. Rather than shock and awe, Varriano delivers only awe. 

Artistic Roots

John Varriano was born into a family of artists and artisans. His father Angelo was a brilliant abstract sculptor and inventor. Both his maternal and paternal uncles expressed considerable artistic prowess. And his paternal grandfather Giovanni was an exceptionally talented artisan who spent much of his later years creating large, classically proportioned vases inlaid with exquisitely intricate mosaics.

His cousin, John, who confusingly bears the same first and last name, is a teacher at The Arts Students League in New York City. A younger cousin Jon is a highly respected commercial graphic designer, and a distant cousin John is an Art Historian and author of books on Caravaggio, Baroque Architecture, and Art.

Early Years

Immersed in the arts from an early age, Varriano has been drawing, painting and sculpting since childhood. His introduction to artists' tools came about at the age of five. A family member recalls how “The passionate young artist showed his father a series of play-doh figures he made. Unimpressed with the medium, his father took him to Manhattan’s art district to purchase oil paints, sculpting clay, art pencils, and implements." From that point onward, Varriano would spend much of his youth and young adulthood in his father’s studio, honing his artistic skills. He credits his father with instilling a taste for top-notch materials and the importance of gaining knowledge through experimentation with various applications and techniques.

Like many children, he loved the colorful and heroic figures presented to him in comic books. Along with drawing superheroes, he created meticulous studies of the great Renaissance masters, drawing, painting, and sculpting copies of work from Michelangelo, Caracci, Raphael, and the giants of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Exposure to his father’s abstract sculptures aroused a profound connection with abstract expressionism and paved the way for his early work and lifelong love of this art form. 

Education

In adolescence Varriano gained acceptance to a rigorous program at The High School of Art & Design in Manhattan. Young and filled with an insatiable appetite for learning, Varriano voraciously ingested the higher aesthetic applications from late antiquity to the modern era. His daily proximity to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim, MOMA, and Frick resulted in quite a few days of hooky from school. The museums opened up vast vistas of art through the ages. In their galleries, he found kindred spirits: in their bookstores, he found gateways to limitless knowledge.

While he had tremendous respect for his teachers, Varriano's time at Art & Design taught him that he should pursue an autodidactic course of higher education. A polymath from birth, Varriano’s curiosity led him to study art, architecture, engineering, higher mathematics, science, history, philosophy, politics, music, literature, and foreign languages. He views art not as an isolated field of endeavor but one closely related to the totality of humankind's achievements and society's needs in the present.

Artist's Statement

For Varriano, art serves a critical role in human evolution. It is a door that allows us to come into direct contact with higher states of consciousness and transcendent states of reality. 

Awakening The Body

His landscapes and cityscapes are designed to elicit an instinctual, bodily response, bringing the viewer into a greater awareness of their own physicality and the physicality of their environment. 

We encounter trees, plants, buildings, and people daily, but looking and seeing are two distinct functions. Varriano's works make us more attuned to our surroundings, our relationship to others, and our connection to nature. 

The tree we “see” depicted in painting is the same one that has shaded people for more than a hundred years. The concrete edifices we gaze upon are living, breathing entities that contain and transmit the stories of previous generations. 

When we encounter art through our senses, our senses awaken, and we are made a little more whole. “Seeing” on canvas arouses our awareness of the world around us.

Enriching The Soul

Varriano’s figurative works plunge us into the depths of the psyche. These paintings spark a more profound understanding of the human condition and act as a mirror for the ever-evolving development of the soul.

Peering into the cool depths of a deal-maker's eyes, we discover the calm composure that plays a powerful role in successful negotiations. Journeying with commuters to and from work, we experience the daily grind that wears us out and the random impetuses that awaken and remind us that we are alive. 

Privy to people's private, domestic rituals, we gain a more intimate and personal knowledge of one another. Witnessing the ravaging effects of vice, squalor, and homelessness, we encounter the suffering that cuts deeply into ourselves and our society. 

Contemplating Varrianos' many figures, we realize that in observing others so perceptively, we come to a deeper understanding of ourselves. 

The human condition is a shared condition. As the soul opens itself to this truth, it becomes more distinctly collective, at the same time, more distinctly individual. We find ourselves that much closer to becoming who we were born to be. 

Enlightening The Spirit

Varriano’s abstract paintings offer his audience another stage of inner evolution. One in which we can encounter the transcendent spirit dwelling within.

Higher mathematics, physics, color, shape, harmony, and music play significant roles in these creations. Varriano shows us worlds dwelling within worlds, the interplay of form and movement, and life pulsing through hardened stone as atoms move, collide, and reorient themselves.

He reveals the secrets of antiquity and prophecies for the future layered upon one another. And he shows us what it looks like when the spheres speak, and harmony and lyrics take on material form. A virtuoso with color, shape, texture, and tactility, Varriano's paintings are bold and magnificently orchestrated.

Engaging with his paintings is more than a mental or emotional exercise. It is a means of awakening the deepest recesses of our minds and the expansive aspects of our consciousness.

National and International Recognition

John Varriano was the first artist in more than 50 years to have a painting featured on the cover of the New York Times accompanied by an in-depth article. NBC news dedicated a special television segment on the artist that proved so popular it ran in New York taxi cabs for a month. Globo TV, Brazil’s largest network and ABC.es in Spain have also featured stories on the Varriano. Among other media outlets have been Vanity Fair and Greenwich Time.

Exhibitions

Varriano has exhibited his work in galleries as far away as Abu Dhabi and as near as New York City.

Like many established artists in recent years, he has taken to selling his work through his own studio, allowing for a more interactive and dynamic communication with collectors.

A private viewing space on the upper east side of Manhattan provides the perfect setting for collectors to engage with Varriano's work in a distinctly personal way.