Atmosferas

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One of the first people I met on the plastic arts circuit was Monica Filgueiras. This friendship, which started in 1963, has grown since then at the same pace as my admiration for her stature as a gallery owner and supporter of a åstable¼ of excellent artists, from well established ones to emerging new talent.

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Frequently, I have been surprised by the high standard of work by the new artists she presents at her gallery. Coherent with her professional posture and personal sensitivity she has, periodically, offered such artists the chance to return and show the evolution in their work.

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Attentive to such developments, I have observed the path taken by Adriana Banfi, an artist who has increrasingly deserved my attention. Alrerady in her first watercolours, whcih I saw in her exhibition in 1988, I perceived her disquiet and energy, extrapolating the apparent image as support for the articulation of an increasingly assertive abstract discourse, which watercolour is capable of expressing, when permitted to do so.

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Gifted with stimulating vigour and insatiable curiosity, Adriana Banfi developped, in the last few years, a body of work which led insistently towards a journey in the mysterious world of abstraction; a world in which she now finds herself immersed with surprising familiarity. Along with the expected crossing of this bridge, she widened her field of action by transporting creativity to a different support: one which, both by its larger dimensions and by the use of acrylic paint, demands a wider gestural expression, which had hitherto remained under containment.

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Originating in Italy, Adriana Banfi has travelled constantly, showing her work in other countries to increasing approbation. In presenting at Monica Filgueiras gallery the present collection of canvasses, the disquieting artist betrays the fruits of the cultural interchanges to which she has avidly exposed herself. In each of the works on show, as much as in the exhibition as a whole, the involvement the artist has with her work and the decurrent creative process are intimately revealed.

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As an artist always curious and anxious to discover new examples of artistic expression, I am delighted to observe this woman¼s trajectory. I progressively realise that she has become involved with a form of expression that incrreasingly impels her towards fields she does not hesitate to explore. If, on the one hand, my curiosity and attention are provoked by this unknown mystery, on the other hand I find comfort in the solid results now on show. Adriana Banfi is building new bridges with increasing confidence towards the correct fulfilment of her vocation.

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Antonio Peticov

1991 ‚ Exhibition "Atmosferas" - MÙnica Filgueiras Art Gallery

This is surely not the first time that an artist makes a travel journal. Adriana Banfi, however, does this in a novel way, moulding her reflections into a theme within a mature and current.

She uses a total command of the watercolour technique to conjure images that are diluted, almost abstract, quite abstract, even. And there is the metaphor, in that we can sense the figurative in reflections that suggest movement, action and from these the fragments of a city emerge: Venice.

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Not in its total detail, but partly, and in its most magical essence: its water and its colour, now reflected.

While to the spectator is adjudicated the task of discovering what exactly is reflected by the water, the total work does not exhaust itself in its transparencies, but rather it magically goes on to create formal and informal solutions, as counterpoint to the non-narrative theme, whose power is in expressing obstinately the force of its output.

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Adriana Banfi achieves in her current paintings properties which synthesise techniques explored in the past: particularly in watercolour and engraving. The artist seeks to transform colour into an autonomous entity, when she in the density of abstract painting the transparency of watercolour. At the same time she responds to the severe texture of the surface, consequence of the rough canvas surface, by approaching the engraving (incisione) techniques. This whole universe is united through graphic elements which are both essential in their equilibrium and expressive in gesture. Each technique brings its own intrinsic vernacular.

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Adriana Banfi extracts from watercolour the fluidity of transparencies; while engraving lends its discipline, texture and depth, a kind of defence against the mellifluous in watercolour, thus ruling out the possibility of one of these languages overpowering the other, dominating the work. On the contrary, because they are antagonistic in their proposal, both strike each other out, leaving to the painting the possibility of escaping with its autonomy. To achieve these effects of liquidity and texture, the artist uses acrylic paints, which lend themselves to obtain the appropriate viscosity, now more fluid, to achieve transparency, now dense ruggedness.

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All Art aspires to the autonomy of the musical language. That is, all aspire to a language that is exclusive to itself, totally independent. Painting is colour and colour is, of itself, expression. This discovery made by modern art, a revelation of Impressionism, has its precursors in the Venetians who, already in the first half of the 19th century, forced their painting to reflect local light. Adriana Banfi started her trajectory with Impressionism. In this movement, colour was discovered: colour in the plein air, colour as natural phenomenon, immersion in atmospheric luminosity, Colour as Light, colour as objective reality. For this reason, we should regard Adriana Banfi¼s work as visual melody.

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Sometimes, chamber music: severe, the colours light, without the brass sounds; other times, music in lacerating tones, bringing sun flashes to the wind solo, leaving aside the transparent sounds of the well tempered clavichord, exchanging them for the jazzy sharps of the yellows and reds. Add to all this the contained calligraphy of her painting, as if Adriana Banfi incised on the canvas the visual score of an intimate journal.

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