“While I was analysing the theme ‘WOMEN PAINTERS FROM FIVE CONTINENTS’ I managed to throw light, in my own mind, on several, highly sensitive mainstays of global contemporary art”, says Daniela Palazzoli, curator of the exhibition. “Today, with this showing, organized by the OSART GALLERY of MILAN, of such top-tier, expressive and communicative paintings, I hope to spark off a convincing debate with other people and will, therefore, attempt give immediate answers to the most pressing issues concerning the topic”. “The choice of the art of painting, says OSART GALLERY’s Andrea Sirio Ortolani, springs from our devotion to this figurative language which requires, competence, training, passion, concentration and dedication of individually, socially and culturally complex energies and efforts, both imaginative and rational. Painting is also a globally widespread art, enhanced by a surprising and unexpected wealth of variables”.

In the past, many women artists made their mark as great painters, albeit in alternating historical periods. This depended on the opportunities closely tied to the degree of freedom, offered by their environment, to access knowledge, to observe, travel, act, and make themselves known. The battles fought in the Seventies, particularly in the democratic nations, were those which created a stable opportunity for the self-determination of the female gender, leading to a ever-growing attention to their positive, creative outputs. Exhibiting these Women Painters from Five Continents means, therefore, presenting a type of artist light-years distant not only from the old ways of considering the woman, but also from the manner of practising painting simply as an expression of self. These artists - between, except for the Aborigine painter, 27 to 40 years old - thanks to their familiarity with the world of ideas, and to a life shared equally between thought, creativity and practicalities, shape the uniqueness of their pictorial styles through the interaction they create between their ‘female’ gifts of psychological intuition and awareness of the universal values of life and the new skills and pragmatic, creative forces deriving from a direct and shackle-breaking familiarity with the world. The ongoing opening-up of many nations to democracy and the free market, leading to the fall of social, artistic and cultural, as well as economic, barriers, has also increased - on a global level - the attention to and awareness of the long-term implications of these choices. The first of these is that not only material comparisons and confrontations among nations are beginning to emerge, but also those focussed on the various aspects of the quality of human life, both culturally and socially, in which many women now play front-rank roles. Spurred on by this recognition the process of attentiveness toward the affirmation of the female sex, also in the creative field, is constantly improving. The most important thing is to learn to enjoy these offerings of innovative combinations and playful stratagems, interwoven between the rational, and emotional; the functional, hedonistic and aesthetic; the strong and psychologically sensitive, which improve and enhance the humanity of our lives.

We introduce our theme with the work of the Aborigine painter Ruby Williamson (1940 ca), who carries us back to the ancestral reality of the southern continent, and the ingeniousness and willpower of various artists who have succeeded in overcoming the barriers raised against them, to prevent them from practising their art. The Aborigines have been communicating their “Dreamings” in many different ways for thousands of years - the creation of their land, the birth of life, human beings, and the moral code which guides them and is handed down from the spirits of their forefathers. In 1971 modern equipment and acrylic painting began to be introduced in various Tribes. This facilitated the production and dissemination of their works, then an exclusively masculine activity whereas women were relegated to the production of manual artefacts. Around 1980, however, women began to break free, to become emancipated, and to produce, by themselves, increasingly more appreciated works (so much so that today they are achieving a recognition which is equal, sometimes even superior, to the attention paid to male painters). All this based on their ability in interpreting with verve and imagination the precepts of the symbols through which, together with abstract forms, they visually recount their stories and myths, and also the salient points of the landscape and settlements, thanks to which they live in communion with their villages.

The personality and paintings of Rosson Crow (1982) – a texan, gifted with a vast dowry of artistic studies and painting travels – also draw nourishment from her relationship with the social environment she lives in. In her case – as with Texas Painting (George Strait) – she is fascinated with the various interiors of pubs, bars and other public venues, now a part of local myth and legend due to the epic evenings they were a magnet and background to, as well as with the kind of human aggregation they call to mind. Here, for example, she evokes a famous country musician George Strait, through her painting, rich in improvisation and jazz, rock and country-style colouring. Because there are no people in her scenarios, she integrates her stages with the domineering vitality of her pictorial gesture-making which becomes, under our gaze, the protagonist, the accomplice of a ‘painted night-life’. Among explosions and depressions of colour, and an intense scenic vitality, we too find ourselves living inside her imaginary house of the night.

The South Korean artist Suejin Chung (1969) is an attentive observer who loves to recount, rather than stories, the possible meetings between people, events, situations and objects through affinities and enigmas, which we come across in the almost infinite catalogue of the universe containing the goods, games and socializing activities of the modern world. This fantasy of hers, figuratively image-rich, that of an acrobatic jumbler, is so attractive and mysterious that we are tempted to stay there, to bask in the interpretation of her works. Better not, however, even more so because these paintings of hers, deeply encyclopaedic, are abstract works, tri-dimensional structures we are invited to penetrate non only according to the vertical and horizontal coordinates of the surfaces, but also deep into the profundities of the three dimensions of the painting (and, therefore, also along the diagonals). The artist says: “Painting is multi-dimensional geometry. And understanding a painting has to do with the resonance created between the painting multi-dimensional structure and the viewer’s structure of consciousness”. Thanks to her creative generosity and ingeniousness, structure, shapes, colours and meetings between stories and fragments invite us to participate in a ongoing game of chess between reality and abstraction.

What Iva Kontic (1982) proposes is an installation based on three views of city streets, as if we are observing them from a window, from inside the room. Visitors to the exhibition find themselves at the centre of the set, made up of three paintings. They ‘inhabit’ the place having a clear view of the street, but poor visibility of the interior, depicted in deep shadow. I look at Iva with a question-mark in my eyes: the whole scene is curious, and very well painted, but is doesn’t totally involve me. “It’s Belgrade, my city, she explains. But, above all, it is the representation of a failure, of a meeting missed”. A new query on my part, this time accompanied by a mental confronting of the differences between what I myself see and what she, and other Belgrade dwellers, observe. We, passers-by in the global world, remain indifferent. Iva Kontic, who lives far away from the city of her birth, has painted these views of Belgrade with nostalgia ever-present in her eyes, nose and ears, with the lights, fragrances and sounds of an enchanted world made up of childhood memories. For her and for some others this view is the music-score of a life. For us, anonymous, disenchanted travellers, it is only a speck on the atlas, a spot which, at the most, might interest us as an artistic point focalized by Kontic onto one of the sweet and sour reality of globalization. A glocal reality. Fondness and memories give to a landscape an uniqueness, real and fictitious, which originates from a kind of psychological identity between one life and the places where it develops. To global ‘foreigners’, like us, only two routes remain: to understand and to accept, or not to travel and to stay at home ignoring, if we can, the ever-advancing globetrotting world. I choose to travel, and neither does Iva Kontic, basically, refuse to do so.

Painting, for her, is only one of the many tools at her disposal. What counts is the urgency and sense of need intrinsic to certain things, that encourage her to react to the world by constructing her works. Other artists exhibited here could share these maxims, or rather they might….were it not that….were it not that painting today is the visual writing par excellence, universal, flexible, shareable and readable, not only on a sensitive, physical, almost touchable plane, but also as regards concept and even art installation. This is proven by the two following artists in our project whose passionate interest is directed, more than to home and space, to human beings.

The human and creative biography of Hayv Kahraman (1981) introduces us to a kind of model-artist which is spreading through the new-type, global generations – people who have grown up in more than one country, who can draw on educational training and cultural and social contacts promoting critical comparisons between social models, and offer a great variety of techniques and artistic styles to draw from. Kahraman is extremely direct when she faces up to the theme she has set her heart on: female oppression and the violence suffered by women in countries like Iraq, where she was born. A fundamental instrument used in her communicative strategy is surprise: we approach her paintings almost stunned by the elegance of the lines and the beauty of her sinuous, slender-necked women. Then we stop, amazed, when we realize how these poor human beings have been abused, outraged and turned into puppets. Her training in the sumi ink drawing technique – also a philosophy which aims to create harmony, dynamically counter-balancing the forces of the universe – has enriched itself over time with other cultural stimuli, from the Persian miniature to various suggestions of Renaissance portrayal (Kahraman has also studied in Florence). In her larger works too she always draws her figures – on neutral backgrounds – in a flat, bi-dimensional key, in order to eliminate distraction from the contrast between the flexible beauty of the lines of their silhouettes and the forms of oppression they are suffering. With her, beauty thus becomes a new kind of weapon for denouncement: even those who do not want to listen to her cannot, in the end, resist the fascination of her images. They come close and are assailed by meaning and contents. This is how, by rendering the ugly obsolete, Kahraman captures the attention of the observer: she invites him/her/us to actively interpret and to reflect.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a 32 years-old Anglo-Ghanian who made her debut with portraits inspired by the great European portrait-painting tradition. She loves its authority and symbolic presence. Her characters too are vigorous figures, aggressive, hardened: ‘with strong teeth’, she says. The artist paints them, in fact, not because they stand there only to be looked at, but because of their capacity to face up to others - to us -, to attract our attention, to engage us in a confrontation and a debate, in a mutual interrogation relating to our respective personalities, or even about what we want or expect from these ‘others’. The effectiveness of her strategy is based on the physiognomy of the painted figures – who are not real persons, but non-existent yet credible portraits: projections of her imagination nourished by dreams as well as by physical suggestions and iconographic recollections of powerful figures, like politicians and ambassadors. People eyes, which often emerge from the blackness of the backgrounds, more than inviting our gaze, stare inexorably at the observer. Recently Yiadom-Boakye, besides painting single portraits, has begun to portray groups. This time the theme is that of “Les Partisans” or ‘followers’ of a chief. The work has a narrative treatment. The characters far from static are caught in full action. They seem to have been taken by surprise, as in a forced awakening – they are still wearing their bed socks and, wrapped in sheets, are protecting themselves against the cold. Dazed, they follow the charismatic woman figure (similar to Lynette herself) who leads them. The idea of power which was previously played by institutional testimonials is now moving on to a woman, at least in the territory between dreams and reality where these men move in a kind trance. Precisely because Lynette Yiadom-Boakye works have such a strong conceptual side, painting is for her not an optional. It is a form of determinative writing: it succeeds in visualizing the non-existent and in nurturing the physical and almost touchable presence of her figures.

Visitors to the exhibition will find themselves at the very centre of a space, precisely the opposite of a normal presentation hall. The works appear – not hung on the wall for contemplation – but projected towards us, striving to involve us, to ask our opinion, to capture our attention, questions and cross-examinations. Even if these artists, due to their age-group and culture profiles, belong to a world which seems to have overcome the radical feminist battles, the same commitment and human sensitivity they use when choosing the daily-life scenarios and themes they wish to fight for, lead them to consider painting as a vigorous and engaged means of communication. Talent, creative force, ability to convince, entertain, seduce – with a single objective – to transform the exhibiting space into an arena where, through beauty, they engage us in topics indicating: sensitivity towards the environment; the perception of what might be called ‘home’ in the global world; relations between genders, races, sexes, and what, in the end, turns an a person into a unique individual, different from any other, yet capable of existing with others. These artists do not know each other, they are not part of a group, they come from cultures and places scattered over the five continents. Each one of them possesses an autonomous style and creative personality. We are, however, reassured by several, thematic affinities between them, made clear to us in the course of this seed-sowing itinerary: they are the promise of a chance for understanding, for a global-level dialogue whereby the creative energy of art succeeds in representing a strong and persuasive role.

Daniela Palazzoli

OPENING: JANUARY, 26th 2010 AT 7 - 9 P.M.

ON SHOW: FROM JANUARY, 27th TO APRIL, 2nd 2010