Alan Rankle is a pure painter. A painter who sinks his roots in the British tradition and brings the concept of landscape to a contemporary level. His main subject is indeed a study of natural places, in a vision which is filtered by wide abstract strokes combined with a more resolute figurative language. Rankle finds his inspiration in the discussion on current environmental problems, recounting the fragility of our natural world, battle field between invisible forces fighting in our environment. “My work expresses the concept of a tradition which is continually evolving and which brings changes to our way of looking at ourselves and at the environment”. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, one of William Turner’s biographers, talked about the mystery in nature and in art, defining it as “ that condition in which objects are seen partially, enough for us to become aware that there is something but not enough to define them completely with just one look without the help of the deductions from experience ”. In the same way the images that Rankle transfers to the canvas, which surely find inspiration from Turner but also from Jacob van Ruisdael, Claude Lorrain and Francesco Guardi, accompany the viewer through a very personal interpratation of lanscaping painting. Jackie Wullschlager, in the Financial Times, says “ Rankle's depiction of Nature as luminous, tortured, polluted or damaged, conveyed in violent surges of paint, bold blocks of colour and diffused light make him a distinctive contemporary landscapist”, and Roger Woods in Art International “ Rankle’s paintings engage in the dialectic between the means of art and the sensations before the subject in a particularly acute way. He seeks to suspend the painting at that point just before the mark, in all its expressiveness, dissolves into the illusion of the image. Landscape has always demanded abstraction because its overwhelming complexity and scale necessitate generalisation, and this is true of Ruisdæl and Poussin as much as De Kooning. Rankle is fully aware of this, and exploits all the historical possibilities of the landscape by entering into a complex dialogue with the representional codes of landscape art from several periods and cultures.”
ALAN RANKLE | BIOGRAPHY
Alan Rankle was born in Oldham, Lancashire in 1952. He studied at Rochdale College of Art, at Goldsmiths’ College, at the University of London, and at The Liu Academy of Traditional Chinese Arts. His first exhibition dates back to1973, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts of London. An important series of paintings, Riverfall , exhibited at Southampton City Art Gallery in 1993, introduced his works to a wider audience. He is one of the most outstanding artists of his generation thanks to his skill in expanding the vocabulary of contemporary painting and his contribution to the lasting relevance of lanscape painting in view of the present environmental problems. His works are part of public and private collections all over the world. For a full biography: www.federicorui.com/artisti/rankle/rankle_BIO.html Federico Rui started working for a prestigious art gallery in Milan in 1995, being in charge of setting up exhibitions and dealing with customer relations, thus learning the job of gallerist (art dealer?/gallery manager?) on the field. In 2002 he and a partner founded la Galleria Pittura Italiana, which organized twenty exhibitions in their headquarters in via Palermo 1, and more than thirty exhibitions in other locations, with a particular interest in promoting young artists.
In 2009 Federico Rui Arte Contemporanea was created: the gallery in via Turati was opened with a retrospective on Aligi Sassu for the centenary of his birth. The gallery specialises in promoting emerging artists, with a particular preference for painting. Since 2004 he has taken part in the most important art fairs (Milan, Verona, Bologna, Padua, Bergamo, Vicenza) and has been collaborating with the main Italian auction houses. He has organized and taken part in exhibitions in London, Brussel, Rome, Genova, Venice, Cape Town. He has been involved in art events for Timberland, Lloyd's, the European Parliament in Brussel, Banca Popolare di Lodi, F.A.I., Quadriennale in Rome, Poltrona Frau, Comune di Milano, Comune di Como, Premio La Fenice, publishing various artist monographies for Skira and Allemandi. Several of the artists he represented have taken part in the most important international festivals such as the Biennale in Venice.

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