Hidden Landscape                                                                                                                                                   ITALIANO               CLOSE

                                                               

Let’s stand in contemplation before these paintings, immersed in their infinity and profundity, their sense both complete and archaic; each artist using a distinct language which investigates and torments the picture surface each at their own pace and their own visual language, yet both inspired by a classical matrix.

The spaniard Isabel Ramoneda and the american Georgina Spengler have the same need; to retire to a distant place which is at the same time both primitive and precious, a place where they can look at nature not as decoration but as part of a profound search into its innermost mysteries.

Nature surrounds these artists together with the viewer in a natural embrace where one is indissoluble from the other.
A hidden naturalism, both modern yet revisited, like a red thread which stretches from Monet’s water lilies to the informal art of the 50’s.

Isabel’s paintings are white panels, stained by the passing of time, soiled with morandiana dust which is ably mixed with color. Bright colours like violet and lime, are selected by the artist as a way of attempting to find a new structure to painting, something that her compatriot Tapies, in another epoch, had already achieved. Her surfaces are made up of objects from nature, areas of color forming an inner map which reveal the ascending and descending trails, little spots which smell of mould and words obsessively reiterated blurred by the opacity of existence.

Georgina’s paintings are damp and dark green panels, thick forests or heavy undergrowth displaying great depth. The nature in these en plein air is lush and vibrates before our eyes.
Their endless richness is a tiring and continuous search as she scratches away and recomposes on the wood, attempting to “capture the movement and transformation of the paint”. A nature which regenerates and burrows away in the depths of painting is a path which has already been trodden in their own individual way, by Constable, Turner, Fragonard, Twombly, Monet, Corot and others. However from her great love of nature, Georgina sinks into the abyss of poetry trying to make the invisible as read in the words of the poet Giorgos Seferis, visible. As she works Georgina surrenders to this text, reading and rereading the verses until they become almost like a mantra, inspiring her with their energy.

Ivana Porcini