La Posta Foundation once again shows painting and the ability it still has to move people, despite the accelerated technological changes in which we are immersed and its incredible ability to create images. Perhaps it is the tactile addition provided by the direct relationship with the pictorial matter, what we now call the analog world, that we miss especially after the long period of masks and social distance.
We return to painting and we do so with a retrospective of the work of the Dutch artist (although she was born in Suriname) Norma van Elburg-Jessurun, which includes paintings from the beginning of her artistic career in the 1970s in what then it was known as the Netherlands Antilles, going through paintings made in the eighties in Mexico and Guatemala, in the nineties in Chile, and, finally, from 2002, from El Moralet, Alicante. Which gives the retrospective a very broad temporal and geographical dimension, incorporating images from very different cultures, often made under the teachings of local artists (some of great renown, such as Luigi Pinedo in Curaçao or Hernán Larraín in Santiago de Chile), with whom he has shared and enriched his wealth of knowledge and experience in the art of painting.
From her long career we have selected for this exhibition works from some particularly relevant series, such as the one corresponding to portraits, flowers, some abstract… [a small sample can be seen above in the carousel]. Particularly striking are the portraits, which are taken “from life”. This is, on the basis of photographs, made with the consent of the protagonists. These are portraits with an extremely classical composition, like those painted on commission. Although in this case there has been no commission, but interest in reflecting the world around him.
Among all the selected works, one from 1993 stands out very strongly. It has no title, it is painted in Santiago de Chile. It consists of a vase with some flowers, some apples on the table and a plaster head. At that time she was receiving classes from, among others, Hernán Larrain, a painter with cubist influences and in general from the Vanguards of the first third of the 20th century. There he learned to make “glazes”, an essential technique when painting with white. The result has a metaphysical air, between Cezanne and Chirico.
During all these years Norma has been exhibiting her work wherever she went and currently her work is part of private collections in the US, France, Argentina, Switzerland. She is represented by the gallery ROMMY ’S GALLERY, based in Barendrecht (next to Rotterdam).
“Retrospectief” by Norma van Elburg–Jessurum can be visited at Fundación La Posta between March 3 and April 1 (during Fallas week the room will remain closed). During that time there will be a musical evening, on a date yet to be determined. As in the “artistic adventures” in Curaçao.
