Women in shapes & colours

Ava Blanche
Apr 21, 2023
4 min read

This exhibition has an abstract character. From the outside, the viewer can observe different shapes, colours, symbols and surfaces in the paintings on display. Together they can form a mix of harmonies and contrasts.

What does ‘Abstract’ mean and what connections can we speak about between women, art and abstraction?

Abstract means, according to the dictionary, intangible, outside reality, detached from intuition, something that does not exist concretely and cannot be named.

When one talks about abstract art, it is defined as art that has no relation to reality and uses a visual art language with elements such as shape, colour, dots and lines, and therefore it creates its own reality.

What is remarkable about the artworks of the 3 exhibitors are two tendencies: either it is related to reality and the work is completely abstract, or there is an original connection to reality. In the first case, the visual language, shapes, colours, points, textures and lines have no connection with reality.

The dream world is present in the artworks of Daniela G., in which the symbol of cosmic world and the bird (point) penetrating the sky are reminiscent of the philosophical concept of flight and infinity of existence. Creativity brings us to the union of our consciousness with our soul and with our inner self. And that is our purpose in this life, to be completely free and in harmony with who we are. As for the techniques, the main technique that Daniela G. uses is oil paint, but also media mix materials from everyday life such as coffee (which stands for awakening for Avdia) herbs from the kitchen, spray, paint, acrylic paint.

Applying Plato’s allegory to our world reveals many similarities with the art world, and especially with the intuitive way in which women create strong bonds with their life experiences and inner strengths.

Questions such as:

Have we been living in an unconscious process all this time?

What pressure/influence do consumer society, mass media, money, press have on women’s artistic discourse?

Are we stuck in some kind of bubble that we can’t get out of?

Emi Zaneti has a varied range of works, her style growing into different directions: paintings, drawings, icons. Her focus has always been on creating works that represent the women and their emotions, such as het paintings “Margaret and faith” and “Peace inside”. She also has abstract works such as “The silence of the culprits” and she mostly works with egg tempera on canvas. Her paintings have usually large dimensions, of 115x75 cm, and her works know how to make their presence felt and admired. Emi developed as artist a great love for detail, symbolism and storytelling by means of her art. She lived ten years in Italy where she enriched her culture and enlarged her look on the enormous Italian art and architectural heritage. Emi would like to inspire people into more talking and reflecting about the inequalities and injustices with which women still have to deal with nowadays.

Returning to the original theme, women and art, in the current exhibition we see that each artist has a story to tell that forms the basis of her paintings. Links with Brancusi and the concept of the Infinite Column can also be seen in the artworks of Daniela Gorbanescu, where the magical bird flies above an unreal iridescent sky with silver blue tones and where the peoples are painted with a sense of pressure that gives breathing space to the painting. Colors and shapes give us a sense of time and space and a common thread can be immediately noticed for all paintings: LOVE FOR COLORS AND SHAPES.

Ava Blanche's artwork is inspired by the feminine soul that appears in a symbol of infinity. Most of the works are created using mixed media, for example, with different inks that change color over time, so that the painting develops and evolves in different stages according to exposure to light, especially sunlight (see Plato’s allegory of the cave ). Conceptually, each work is a tribute to women around the world who contribute to the further development of society.

Avdia Van Art’s painting style is close to Lyrical Abstractionism for the impalpable lightness of the atmospheres narrated, a mixture of magic and harmony in which the smiling positivity emerges as well as the inner delicacy with which the artist observes the world around him almost as if it was constantly enveloped by an emotional soundtrack, by musical notes that become chromatic nuances and that accompany the depth of feeling towards the awareness of manifesting oneself outside, of freeing oneself to seek a dialogue with the surrounding nature and everything that happens and comes to involve the emotions. The intangibility of the surrounding environment contributes to the magical charm of this talented Romanian artist’s work. Avdia Van Art has had more than forty exhibitions in Belgium, the United Kingdom, U.S.A, Germany and Romania, and her works are part of private collections in Belgium and abroad.

The search, the flight to unknown layers of reality and the inner discourse is characteristic of each of the artists. They not only give us (via the techniques used) a view of their inner strength and joy for life. At the same time, they travel with us through colours and shapes to a beautiful art world where we can see the shadows of the flames in the cave. Women, the most beautiful creatures in the world, artists with a soft spot for all beautiful things, mothers, daughters, husbands, sisters — these facets of “womanhood” you, the audience, can recognize and hopefully promote.

Women are diverse: they paint their life experiences with heart and soul according to their intuition, passion for colors and shapes they perceive and with generosity they expose them to their audience.

These not only exhibit their works of art, but give the public a piece of their dreams, their ideas and desires that make our world more beautiful and fascinating.