THE ONLY WAY TO DISCOVER THE LIMITS OF THE POSSIBLE IS TO GO BEYOND THEM INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE
Arthur Clarke
With her collection Breath and Thunder, Chiara Del Vecchio opens a profound dialogue with one of the most archetypal and powerful figures in the human imagination: the horse. Far from being a mere subject, the horse emerges as an emblem of ancient, spiritual, and visceral strength—a threshold between matter and spirit, between instinct and contemplation.
Through her masterful use of the airbrush, Del Vecchio creates suspended, fluid images wrapped in a rarefied light that dissolves boundaries and transforms each equine figure into an apparition. These bodies seem to surface from memory, from dreams, from a time that is no longer chronological but deeply interior. Breath and Thunder is breath and momentum, silence and power: an invitation to reconnect with the most authentic and liberated part of the self.
In these works, the horse does not run. It vibrates. It observes. It inhabits. And it reminds us that even within the elegance of stillness lies the possibility of absolute movement.
With Breath and Thunder, Chiara Del Vecchio opens a new chapter in her visual and conceptual exploration, placing the horse at the center of her investigation. Far from any descriptive or naturalistic intent, the artist elevates the animal to an archetypal symbol—an icon of primal energy that merges strength and grace, instinct and sensitivity, matter and spirit.
The title of the collection, Breath and Thunder, immediately conveys the poetic tension that runs through the entire body of work: breath as a sign of life, presence, and intimacy; thunder as a manifestation of power, momentum, and freedom. It is within this dynamic space that Del Vecchio’s subjects take form—not as anatomical representations, but as expressions of an inner vibration, of something essential and profound.
The chosen medium, the airbrush, becomes an intrinsic part of this vision. Far from the sharpness of graphic lines or the density of impasto painting, the airbrush allows the artist to construct images that seem to emerge from emptiness, floating in a gravityless space, suspended between revelation and disappearance. Forms dissolve, contours soften, and light—always carefully modulated—shapes intimate, rarefied atmospheres.
The works in Breath and Thunder do not narrate; they do not illustrate. They evoke. Each horse is a living presence, but also a mental projection, a liminal figure that inhabits the threshold between memory and dream. At times, the animal faces the viewer frontally, with a direct and hieratic gaze; at others, it appears in motion, as if animated by an inner energy propelling it beyond time and space.
In this new body of work, Del Vecchio continues to refine her singular visual language, marked by a powerful tension between the visible and the invisible, between figuration and dissolution. After having explored the feminine and floral universe with deep sensitivity, the artist now turns her gaze toward another complex and ancestral form of beauty: the animal realm. And she does so without resorting to tropes of brute force or romanticized wildness, instead restoring the horse’s sacred and symbolic dimension—as a creature of listening, movement, and presence.
Breath and Thunder is a collection that invites us to slow down our gaze, to welcome the subtle vibration that pulses beneath the surface of things. It calls us to reconnect with a deeper part of ourselves, often forgotten, where breath and thunder coexist, alternate, and merge. Here, the horse is not merely a pictorial subject, but an inner revelation.