Federica Luser – In occasione della mostra “Bora Vs Scirocco”
Giulia Crimaldi arranges nature: she paints flowers, fruit, fish, books, portraits and environments without any hierarchical organisation, capturing characteristics and details, even those we do not usually notice, to make them visible. For Giulia, the spine of a book with the title and author’s name against a red, blue or yellow background has the same beauty and compositional importance as a face or a magnificent juicy peach. Her works cannot be described as hyper realistic because the artist makes changes to the real world, altering it with the clear intention of perfecting it. In this way she offers an interpretation of what surrounds her, not a perfect imitation or a reproduction of reality, according to the definition of Hyperrealism. The still life paintings force us to look at an apple, a lemon or a pumpkin with different eyes, to pause and consider forms that we normally do not give any importance to and grasp their intrinsic beauty. Giulia Crimaldi commands the pictorial medium with rare technical skill, but much more than this. She tries to go beyond, surpassing her stylistic ability – which risks creating a sterile and aseptic image – identifying with the objects and instilling her own energy, in an attempt to give them a new sense and new life. She enters into them and their environments. The route she has chosen is anything but easy. The decision to choose figurative art, and the still life in particular, forces her to continually challenge herself and reality, in order to create her own vision and succeed in communicating her wonder to the spectator.Indeed, the refinement of certain compositions, such as Coup de coeur (2017), underlines the artist’s need to sustain and promote her own sense of beauty with every means, combining the harmony of the composition, the equilibrium of forms, the precision of the details and above all the overall order. The artist herself admits, “I reconstruct and organise what I see in my daily life as out of place, broken or chipped”. The jug in Sicilian life style (2016) is actually cracked, but in the picture it is instead perfect, living a new life, perfectly intact. Everything has been adjusted. In Spose promesse (2017) the three slices of peach, perfectly aligned, are reflected in the transparent water and create an extraordinarily evocative image, accentuating the distance between the real situation and its transfer onto the canvas.
While the still life paintings are all set against a black background and crossed by a strong light illuminating the composition diagonally or frontally, the landscapes, environments and genre scenes – as they were once called – have a vivid light that makes it possible to distinguish even the smallest detail. The hand of the artist goes beyond the gaze. It discovers details that we would have overlooked.
Observing Incanti (2018) we find ourselves in a familiar place, the large fish market in Trieste, now transformed into the Salone degli Incanti. The two figures in the centre of the composition are smiling, but they are not the true focus of the scene, dominated instead by the exaggerated abundance of fish of all kinds, sizes and colors, painted with a skill that astounds. It is as if we are there with her to wander through the stands and observe every scale, tentacle and claw, captured by the light and colors, imagining sounds and smells.Giulia Crimaldi has always absorbed the essence of Sicily, and in the two pictures dedicated to fish markets, one in Trieste, either a distant recollection or a scene reconstructed from memory, the other in Palermo, her love of warm vibrant colors, and strong and all-enveloping light, underlines her love for this land, to which she pays homage in other works. The Fichi d’india, for example, are an ode to Sicily: the green of the leaves and the orange-red or violet tints of the flowers and fruit stand out against the blue sky so typical of the south.When her gaze moves instead to the interior of a shop, the image brings a story with it. This is the case of the old Saba antiquarian bookshop. Mr Cerne, the owner, is on the telephone in the centre of the scene, and just as the fish dominated at the fish market, here it is the books that steal the scene, miraculously returned to their places by the industrious vision of Giulia. The same is true for the Drogheria Toso, where the jars of spices, sweets and other alchemic concoctions provide a pace and rhythmic cadence to the perspective composition of the shelving.
Giulia Crimaldi’s creative process involves several phases. Initially she uses photography, which allows her to grasp every minute detail, shade and connotation that we would normally overlook, due to the ability our eyes have to summarise when we observe things. Then she draws onto the canvas, in pencil first of all, following this with patient work using a fine brush to compose the forms with acrylic and above all oil paints, until they are perfectly defined. It is a long, patient and solitary task, far from conceptualism and ideology, focusing only and purely on the art of painting.
Endoxa
Giulia Crimaldi è anzitutto pittrice figurativa.
Cresciuta in Friuli Venezia Giulia ed in Sicilia, attualmente vive e lavora fra Trieste e Lugano; in principio ha coltivato la passione per la pittura da autodidatta, formandosi poi attraverso percorsi didattici più approfonditi, con esperienze espostive in Italia e all’estero.
Queste le sue principali esposizioni: BORA VS SCIROCCO, Sala Umberto Veruda – Palazzo Costanzi, Trieste 1-12 marzo 2021; SICILY MY LOVE, Portopiccolo Sistiana (Trieste), 4 luglio-21 agosto 2020; POP ART PORTRAIT, private collection, Sankt Moritz (CH), Dicembre 2019; Galleria Noi Paris, WOMEN’S POP HEART, (Recall), Roma,26 Ottobre 2019;
Galleria NOI Paris, WOMEN’S POP HEART, Parigi, 26 Settembre – 24 Ottobre 2019; InTERpretazioni, Trieste, 12-23 Dicembre 2019, Esposizione personale pittura #FISHKISS 3D; Hermetika, Vele nel vento, Trieste, 10-19 Ottobre 2019, Esposizione pittura figurativa in occasione della Regata Internazionale “Barcolana”; Hermetika, Sotto lo stesso cielo, Trieste 18-28 Settembre 2019; Mu.Sa delle Arti e Mestieri, Internazionale d’Arte Vieste, 6 Luglio – 6 Novembre 2019; I Dauni – IV Edizione Internazionale d’Arte, Vieste, 30 Marzo – 27 Aprile 2019; Hermetika, Collettiva di Primavera, Trieste, 6-20 Aprile 2019; Appunti di viaggio, Palermo, 7 Ottobre 2018, Esposizione personale di fotografia; Stella dei Venti (e altre latitudini), Cormons, sala espositiva Associazione Cormons-Austria, 16 Giugno-10 Luglio 2018, Esposizione antologica di pittura e fotografia; Hermetika, Collettiva di Primavera
Trieste, 7-21 Aprile 2018; The Players, Mostra fotografica internazionale – Le vie delle Foto, Trieste, 1-30 Aprile 2018, Esposizione Internazionale di Fotografia; Hermetika, Dialoghi, Trieste, 20-31 Ottobre 2017.
Parallelamente, è cacciatrice di effetti fotografici legati a un’evidente e istintiva, ricerca impressionista, dove nulla è in posa, ma la realtà è riscattata da sogni ad occhi aperti filtrati da uno scatto che vuole essere al contempo generoso e umano.
Qui l’articolo per Endoxa, A Day in the Life of Trieste
Il Piccolo
