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Maria Jose Aguilar Gutierrez

Title
Alhambra
Materials
Oil on wood.
Dimensions
h.50cm w.70cm d.5cm
Completed
Feb 2002

Maria Jose's Description: Symbolic Realism

The minting of this term to define the style of my painting production was due to the fact that the appearance of certain elements in each work is not fortuitous. Quite the contrary, they respond to a prior selection for exercise as mere keys to an internal proper language that lead to deciphering a message which seeks to go beyond amiable aesthetic contemplation.
Thus dry leaves symbolise the inexorable passage of time, the end of all things earthly, the reliable result of a major Baroque influence. This concept is repeated in several works, for example: Premonition (Presentimiento), Reading Old Letters (Leyendo unas cartas viejas) or Musical Solitude (Soledad musicada).
In the wood titled Rose, anecdotally the real name of the model, the petalless rose represents not only femininity and lost innocence, but also responds to a well- known phrase by poet Federico Garcia Lorca, "Youth is a rose that dies." The plant which appears in the right background, popularly known as Adam’s Rib, symbolises the masculine

Maria Jose's portfolio

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Comments

Hanjo

Somehow I knew that cabeza was a proper artist with his process of unravelling particularities. Now he has a congenial campanioness (if that is the appropriate term). Now there are two masters (or better one master and one mistress) that are able to mine the personal in order to address and interrogate the ways in which the present is understood. The obvious meaning of dry leaves and other ancient hints will help drawing on the fictions of history and speculations on the future. So finally we can witness the ethics being invited to speak and being invited to listen. So a simple brush with a single hair on it can interrogate assumptions and opens the space between understanding and perception. It’s just amazing.

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