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Martina Corgnati - Art on Board Costa Crociere Travelling Collection 2010 Skira editore, Milano Elena Andreescu lives on magic. Originality from Timisoara in Romania, but Italian by education and adoption, Elena has brought together the Naive art heritage from her native Eastern Europe with a knowledge of the art and ideas of the West. All'alba del 2000 (At the Dawn of 2000), one of the many works by this artist on board the Costa Mediterranea, is a perfect example of her refined infantilism, her dreamy spirit but also her exacting and rigorous technique. Inspired, as she herself declares, by Chagall, Andreescu has interpreted the epoch-making transition into the new millennium as a poetic voyage undertaken by two fairy-tale characters, accompanied by symbolic and spiritual animals, coloured cats and snow-white peacock. The sea rocks to the pressing rhythm of the waves, drawn in spirals beneath a sky inhabited by stars and two celestial bodies with human faces, the moon and the sun, a combination that has signified the passage of time since medieval times. Allegory and magic accompany us in the narration of a mystical, human tale that continues headlong across the billows of life: the artist favours pure, deep shades of colour, strong and simple harmonies and contrasts, such as the "difficult" combination of red and blue much loved by the masters of the fifteenth century. Intellectual and rigorous, yet always inspired, Elena Andreescu describes for us an ideal world of dreams and allegory, of fantasy and illusion, as a destination to strive for. There are cuntless symbolic elements in her work of the last thirty years, but the fascinating, inscrutable presence of the cat dominates over them all, as the symbol of the female soul, magnetic and silent. All'ombra delle rose (In the Shadow of the Roses) is confirmation of this, as are numerous other paintings, all equally lovely: the silent protagonist of this image, with her large, unspeaking eyes that seem to be inspired by the delicate figures of Massimo Campigli, is accompanied by a mysterious blue cat whit a human face, that seems to oversee the delicate transition from the spring of the blossoming tree to the summer of the large roses. The maidem does non comment, but waits. She has interrupted her reading and gazes at us fixedly. Everything is simple and flowing like the soft lines that define the supple volumes of the painting. In the sumptuossly furnished ship conceived as an Italian palazzo, somewhere between Baroque and Rococo, Elena Andreescu's paintings are a pause from the exuberance of colour and strong sensation that await at every corner. They are an oasis to let you catch your breath, so it no accident that they are there in the suites to await us. |
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