Friday, January 17, 2014

The Silhouette of Anabela Acurrucada by Jorge Velarde



 
Anabela, my beauty Anabela, when are you going to wake up? With your softness body and commodity you seem to be relax and calm. Your face cannot be seen, neither your frontal silhouette. Who are you Anabela? Are you a serving girl, the artist mistress, or just a simple woman?
  Jorge Velarde is a contemporary Latin American artist from Ecuador. The oil on canvas composition was completed in 2011, located at the MAAC (Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo) in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Velarde is known for his contemporary art works and his fascinating portraits. His portraits often portrayed his wife Anabela, and this work is one example of them. He presents his wife in a relaxed position that transmits tranquility and peace to the viewer.
Anabela can be seen lying on the bed with her back to the viewer. and, appears to be resting after a hard day’s work.  The artist’s wife is definitely his muse as he seems to captures every moment of her life in his artwork. Painting her is a way to express his flove. He painted her wife not looking at the viewer as a way to protect her identity.
 “Anabela Acurrucada” is painted in the style of photorealism. He represents his subject without artificiality, avoiding supernatural elements. The wrinkles on Anabela’s feet are an exquisite detail that makes the composition appear more real; similarly, the shadows in the lower back of her let the viewer to identify the backbone of the person. Moreover, the texture of the hair, cloth, and fabrics invited the viewer the urge of touching the artwork.
This horizontal composition is well balanced, with a female figure along shown lying in her bed, with her back to the viewer taking up the vast majority of the pictoral frame. Starting from the right with Anabela’s head, which is lined toward the pillow putting weight to the right but balanced with the weight from the woman’s buttocks on the left create a calm and stable image. Furthermore, the painter brings the buttocks of the woman to the front of the paint to help create more balance. Spaces used in a composition play a very important role, due to the fact that these details are what defines if a work is balance or not. The pale and soft colors evoke tranquility, peacefulness, and quietness that influenced in the viewer’s emotional response to the work, which is one that evokes mystery.
Velarde’s brushwork adds to the soft textures created in this composition. The fabrics of the bed, the hair and the clothes, all three have a lot of texture, which rivals the details of a photograph. The strong use of perspective makes it more seem hyperrealistic and three-dimensional. 
This artwork stands out within the exhibit because different from the others, because of the modern tendency to paint more abstract, simple, with a lot of colors, straight lines without representing the reality of what they see. In this case, Velarde focuses his artistic intention of representing exactly what he sees, the reality of his woman laying on the bed in the sunlight. In comparison with today’s artworks, “Anabela Acurrucada” is very interesting and unique; Personally, I appreciate Velarde’s figurative realism in today’s postmodern society more because of the ability to identify with central figure.
Though we do not know why he chose to portray his wife in this position but I would like to postulate that Velarde is trying to both evoke and express a feeling of love. He has painted the reality of his life in this quiet room of pale colors and his wife in pajamas, lying in bed, and gives the viewer a refresh and tranquil feeling.
Anabela Acurrucada invites the viewer to reflect upon this moment of repose, by appreciating as the painter has, the beauty within the minute details of this intimate domestic setting. It reminds me, quite poignantly, of Aristotle’s irreplaceable mind, “the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”.  Bravo, Velarde, Aristotle would approve.



 Figure 1. “Anabela Acurrucada”

Amanda Vallarino
December 10 , 2013



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