Alice Rahon - Surrealism

 

Alice Rahon ( 1904 –1987) was a French/Mexican poet and artist whose work contributed to the beginning of abstract expression in Mexico. She began as a surrealist poet in Europe but began painting in Mexico."Alice Rahon was an integral member of the Surrealist group that lived and worked in Mexico City in the late 1930s. Displaced by World War II, Rahon and her husband, painter Wolfgang Paalen, fled France in 1939, joining André Breton, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo as well as local Mexican artists Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Rahon and her peers found community in exile, and their artwork was informed by the landscape, Indigenous history, and artistic legacies of Mexico. Rahon took a Surrealist approach to all of her work, marrying poetry and myth in an array of media. In Thunderbird (1946), she invokes the aesthetics of prehistoric cave painting, with gestural brushstrokes and contour lines that connect a web of symbolic figures on floating backgrounds. In 1946, a year after the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she created a ballet inspired by the ancient Mayans’ expertise in astronomy. In the ballet, five characters – first imagined through gouache paintings, and then configured as three-dimensional marionettes made of wire – including The Juggler (a magician) and Androgyne (a non-binary gender being), ponder the beginning of life following the destruction of the planet. Rahon was able to channel the spiritual energy of ancestral cultures and did so through a plethora of artistic expressions."(Isabella Achenbach) 

 

 

Michael Forster - Abstract Artwork

 

 Michael Forster (1907–2002) was an Anglo-Canadian abstract artist. Born in Kolkata, India, Forster spent most of his childhood in Meerut. He studied first at Lancing College in Sussex and then later at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central St. Martins – University of the Arts), as well as the Académie Colarossi in Paris. In 1927–1928, he moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada in hopes of avoiding The Great Depression.
"Creatively, Forster explored the changing visual face of the universe long before astronauts began their travels. For most of his career, he took inspiration from the glowing patterns and chromatic depths of space. He composed infinitely varied and rich abstract compositions from the flux and fusion of the galaxies. In this, Michael Forster is virtually unique among painters. Forster possessed a passion for colour that gained recognition from the eminent German art-historian, Paul Westheim: “Colour is the medium of his expression, he has reduced all that is visible, all that is imaginable to colour, a strange and fantastic world of visionary colour. By means of colour, he knows how to give form to a whole range of emotions and feelings.” Forster’s concern for the material of paint itself led him to create brilliant surface textures that are uniquely personal. He worked the varied luminous passages across his canvas from corner to corner, leading the eye through subtle and constant changes. These rich variations remain regardless of the dimensions of his work. His smaller compositions on paper are compelling in their lustrous presence.
In 1960, Forster was honoured with a solo-exhibition of eighty works by Mexico’s Mueso Nacional de Arte Moderno. He has also been the subject of major retrospectives in Luxembourg and Canada. Forster’s paintings have been exhibited in leading museums of the world, including the National Gallery, Washington, Musee d’art Moderne, Paris, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the British Museum, and Sao Paulo Museum, Brazil. Loch Gallery is pleased to reintroduce this great artist to the Canadian public."(lochgallery.com)

 

Jerzy Wladyslaw Puciata - Light is Life

 

 Jerzy Wladyslaw Puciata (1933 - 2014) - Polish painter
“Light is life. Light is God. (…) Light tears up darkness and gives hope. (...) light is the pursuit of deeper knowledge, perfection. It is an expression of my hope that I want to share. It is also the joy of life - the light of colors. These are memories of the moments I experienced, colors, words, all nature. The atmosphere of specific places.
My imagination allows me to go beyond the box. The image must radiate something special, unique, provoking reflection and contemplation. "

 

Alexander Kostetsky

 

 Alexander Kostetsky ( 1954 - 2010 ) was a Ukrainian painter and sculptor, his artist stile is Magic Realism.During his childhood, Kostetsky began to create a distinctive style based on his love of mysterious alien civilizations and science fiction. At school he worked on sculpture, learning from his sculptor mother, and in the seventh grade he created a set of chess pieces intricately carved like medieval knights. Later he sculpted in clay, porcelain and other materials. At Kiev Art School and the Kiev State Institute, he began to master different styles of drawing in the style of the old masters. At the same time he developed his own style and technique of oil painting, wishing to capture his unique artistic visions. However, while studying at the institute, the young Kostetsky had to obey to the canons of socialist realism and his early works do not always reflect his true interests.