Niele Toroni

Born in 1937 in Muralto, Switzerland, Niele Toroni is a Swiss contemporary painter best known for his practice of “Travail-Peinture” which entails marking a surface with imprints of a no. 50 paintbrush at regular 30 cm intervals. Each marking is distinct transforming the experience of spaces ad creating a field in which formal tensions between uniformity and difference, repetition and spontaneity emerge. Niele Toroni’s method never wavers; he paints free of representation and continues to abide by his own rule: he will paint in autonomy.

Toroni had his first show in 1967 at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. That same year Toroni founded the art collective BMPT coming from the first letter of its founders: Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni. The collective questioned notions of authorship and that the art object was more important than its authorship. In other words, they suppressed subjectivity and expressiveness in favour of practical systems, such as the utilization of neutral, repetitive patterns.

His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, The Kunstmuseum Luzern and the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich.

Niele Toroni currently lives and works in Paris.