Alma Redlinger

Alma Redlinger
centenary

Over 100 works by the artist and nearly 100 photographs are brought together to mark 100 years since the artist’s birth. The exhibition brings to the forefront the process of continuous construction of the pictorial discourse. On the one hand, the techniques used evoke the curiosity of experimentation and the pleasure of work: sketches, watercolors, collages, rubbings, engravings and woodcuts, tapestry, frescoes and mosaic – each process with its own finality; however, she is above all a painter, oil on canvas remains for A.R. a slow distillation of experiences accumulated through other techniques. The subjects represented make visible the subjective gaze of the artist, an educated gaze that selects, composes, hierarchizes, sometimes amplifies colors or materials, seeks the necessary light for the composition. The presence of things is paradoxically strengthened by a strong intuition for abstraction, which nevertheless maintains an implicit connection to the model. Perhaps even this positioning of her art between the real and the abstract causes each work to capture a moment suspended outside of time and to convey a mood that the viewer can feel. Her art is not a reproduction, but it arises from the diverted, interpreted, and enriched everyday life, producing a construction of an imagined world that coexists with the lived one and with the historical periods that have succeeded. Throughout her life, the works accumulate in the studio and become part of an interior landscape, somewhat suspended outside of time, which A.R. inhabits and where she works and thus represents: together everyday objects and older paintings, sculptures, collages and sketches, art books and flowers, newspapers, vases, stools and mirrors and models; and sometimes even A.R. herself. The exhibition tries to evoke this interior landscape.

Stylistic formulas over the years have naturally emerged from the countless sketches and studies that have transformed into the paintings with which I participated year after year in official salons, group exhibitions, and solo shows. The ideas and plastic formulas in which influences from Romanian and universal painting are present, the uninterrupted connection with nature—everything regarding objects, characters, landscapes, ensembles—imprints upon me a way of seeing personally. “I do not paint what is seen, but make visible what I see,” said Paul Klee. Alma Redlinger, excerpt from the interview given to Gabriela Bidu, Cronica Română, May 2007

Alma Redlinger (08.03.1924–02.02.2017) was a painter, draftsman, and graphic artist from Romania. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts – Maxy’s School, 1940–1944, and in 1945, from the Guguianu Academy of Arts, with the painter M. H. Maxy as her professor. In 1951, she became a member of the Romanian Artists’ Union. She held 27 solo exhibitions in prestigious galleries in Bucharest and participated in all Official State, Municipal, and Republican Salons in Bucharest, across the country, and abroad, as well as in local and international group exhibitions of painting and graphics. Currently, at the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania, Alma Redlinger’s exhibition “Loss of Innocence” (02.11.2023–31.03.2024) is taking place.

Organizer: Primăria Municipiului Bucureșri prin CREART – Centrul de Creaţie, Artă şi Tradiţie al Municipiului Bucureşti
Curator and Designer: Ștefan Simion and Irina Melița