Bordando el cosmos Embroidering the cosmos – Fernando Gamboa´s Text
English
In the artist’s intimate terrain, where the struggle of opposites in search of perfection and freedom has a place in painting as well as in poetry, Shirley Chernitsky had to fight in order to triumph.
The supposition that in the art of painting it is indispensable to include many things: those with which one is born but which must be developed and perfected, such as inventiveness and imagination; the sensitivity which it is necessary to polish; vocation which almost always demands acts of rigorous and painful discipline; the acquisition of historical and artistic culture in proportion to the mastery of one’s craft, which in poetry is the word and in the fine arts is shape and color, thus in both cases it is only on achieving all these conditions that it is possible to create something which truly transcends.
From the tiny naturalist miniatures which Shirley has drawn with India ink, to the inspired floral compositions painted with gouache on paper and also woven in the tapestries presented in this exhibit, she has crossed a wide and turbulent ocean in a fragile vessel before she could arrive happily at her destined-port.
Her current anti-decorative, anti-naturalist works are conceived by the painter, now a master, as a creation of the spirit. They bear the weight of sensuality which all good art should contain, at the same time that they dazzle with their freedom of shape and subtle imaginary colors.
Español
Refiriéndose a esa visión del arte, Odilón Rendón, el gran pintor francés, dijo: “Eso es lo que supera, ilumina y eleva el valor del objeto a la región del misterio y crea turbación y deliciosa inquietud”.
Por otra parte, Shirley no desdeña el espíritu de la naturaleza. Examina las plantas, flores y mariposas que gusta representar con ojos de ecologista y de botánico; pero lo que le importa es transponerlas a un clima fabuloso donde se hacen al mismo tiempo preciosas y extrañas. Pintadas con maestría, esas flores surgidas de su fantasía se sitúan en un espacio sin límites. Femeninas y masculinas, parecen estar listas para entregar el polen, flotando en su colorido tornasolado. Sus tallos largos y flexibles forman arabescos iluminados con una luz tamizada, que invita a soñar.
En fin, Shirley convierte en magias lo real. Pone en vecindad tonos sostenidos con las más delicadas irisaciones; el fulgor de los rojos y anaranjados, ocres, azules, blancos y sienas constituye las suaves modulaciones de un espacio onírico. Lo mismo puede decirse de sus bellos tapices de variadas dimensiones, y de los cuadros que los acompañan.
Saludo con júbilo la poetización y divinización de las flores imaginarias de esta lúcida etapa de la pintura de Shirley Chernitsky.
México, DF, 18 de agosto de 1986
Fernando Gamboa
Biografía
Bordando el cosmos
Técnica mixta sobre papel
74×54
1984
Embroidering the cosmos
Mixed technique on paper
29×21.3
1984
