PASL Gallery
Torino
1996
"Aquatic - diver" coloured pencil
Water
and Body: Pictorial Metamorphosis of Primary
Symbols
All the exhibits date back to the early months of 1996 and
include 22 works of a small size
and 4 assemblies of other works, some of which are even smaller.
The artist calls them drawings. Actually,
they are thick coloured-pencil compositions in which shapes are immersed
in a complicated arrangement of contrasts, transparencies
and sudden breaks where the identity of the images
delicately acquires a peculiar force.
Two peculiarities can be noticed: one is
connected with the engraving technique, and the other is a way of framing
consistent with the subjects (swimmers, sea colours, sea bottoms). A first inner
frame is the imprint of a matrix obtained by means of a press, and a second
frame is a container, a plexiglas box taking
part in the life of the symbols because it can be understood both as an
inclusion of the air element and as a swimming pool
or a stretch of the sea. These features serve to define the space where
the picture takes its shapes and lives.
In spite of the poor medium used (as well as in engraving, which the artist regards as the
most demanding and difficult goal of her research),
the swimmer’s image acquires its identity and integrity in the fragmentation of the movement and of the
water, in the changing reflections, in the contrasts between remnants of white,
extensions of cobalt, surfing ochre and mixtures of green and yellow.
The sign which makes up the image is now so dense as to be almost like a
draft of the picture, now so sparse that
it peters out in empty spaces.
Thus, water and body mould each other. The
naked body makes a kind of changeable plastic negative in the water, and the
water resists and yields to, the
movement of the body, itself a form
of changeable plasticity.
The sky is also mirrored in this fusion of
and contrast between, body and water. Water and the movement of the naked body
belong to the same natural and primary condition. Besides, the human body, with
its multiple formal value, is a mysterious archetype.
As far as the subjects are concerned, it is
easy but irrelevant to notice
symbols. Actually, symbols are
rooted in experiences which have revealed to the artist new relations with
herself and with nature. We are in the world of art, so what counts here is
the stylistic identity achieved by experiences
and symbols in painting.
Elisabetta Viarengo Miniotti has chosen to
be thrifty with her signs (Matisse thought that thriftiness is the most
important quality), so she constructs rhythms, relations, contrasts, light
transparencies, weight and strength of the matter.
I have focussed on the swimmer, the most
frequent subject pictured in different swimming styles and
also as if it were
watched from the sea bottom, which quite upsets the traditional way of framing,
but I must also bring to mind the sea, swelling and uproaring on its surface,
and the sea bottoms: these are fragments or details that make the different
points of view to explore a synthesis of reality more
penetrating and varied. In
any case, her way of
constructing images is fragile and strong at the same time, by means of
the sign generating colours on an
unlimited number of planes.
Intertwining
or interrupted signs are
never piercing, nor do they leave deep and painful scars. There is always a
sense of lightness, as if all the body let itself be softly wrapped and
caressed, a feeling of being one
and the same with the picture and of an easily surmountable resistance. These
are the emotions given by the discovery of a development from the woods, the birches , the barks pictured in the works
of 1990-94.
Elisabetta Viarengo Miniotti transforms the
elements of nature to penetrate their essence and so achieves a
definite and charming stylistic identity in her small-sized works, thanks
to deceivingly simple variations in colours
and signs.
Francesco De Bartolomeis
Elisabetta Viarengo Miniotti
mail@eviarengominiotti.com
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