The artist Estartús will present his latest pictorial series Amnios-2013 in the Pop Up Art Gallery in Barcelona, from the 19th of September. The series will feature thirty five paintings – paint and resin on canvas- that highlight the return to informalism of this chameleonic painter. Thirty five medium size format paintings that will highlight his creative mastery regarding color and gesture.
After his Reliefs Commited series in 2011-almost grey monochrome -, Jaume Mestres Estartús (Barcelona, 1949) – Estartús by his artistic name-, has resumed the informalist root of Catalan artistic tradition and of his own work, especially with the series called Vision Iron-2009, carried out mainly on metal plates. The artist wanted to insist on the automatic gesture, and the result is a gestural Expressionism focused on the concept of the Amnios.We should remember that Jaume Estartús is a gynecologist a as his source of pictural inspiration the inner membrane that contains the amniotic liquid and the fetus as his source of inspiration . The corión is the outer membrane, it contains the amnios and it´s part of the placenta.
I do not believe Estartús meant to make an organic reproduction of the amnios, not at all. An artist brings together an idea, a concept, to investigate and to look into a series and in this case, he placed his look into the Amnios as the starting point– this is especially noticeable in the first paintings of the series- and he took it as the excuse to start his chromatic pictorial work and gesture on canvas. He is not the first painter to resort to our body organic elements as his driving engine to start his painting production(we should remember that Luis Gordillo´s paintings have sometimes been understood as an expanded development of our DNA chain). The beauty, opportunity and rightness of a series will be appreciated and valued by its plastic and pictorial results.
Amnios 1
Maternal womb
The concept of Amnios has to do with the protection in the primary nucleus and in the maternal womb; basically it has a vital origen. Estartús has said in several occasions that it was the love for the mother what actually made him to become interested in gynecology. The mother is always the amnios, the membrane that protects and offers refuge. According to the artists personal blog “The amnios is the origen of human life that with time produces that constant concern: our ephimeral existence” From the plastic arts point of view Amnios-2013 reflects the general return of the artista to the informalism from other instances; the taste for the gesture, which hihglights his personal pictorial way; his reencounter with his own automatic language; his delight to apply pigments and resins on canvas; summarizing it means Estartus´ love for paint. Art comes from nature and inner reflection.
He has left behind, at least for the time being, the previous series about social compromising issues to get into the maternal womb of the Amnios-2013 where the mysterious inner female world is transported into the artist dimension. Art captures the world in a way that can not be translated in logic cartesian terms, it has its own sintaxis because it deals with different issues. The artist reveals with his latest work his wish to go sailing between different standards through reflection knowledge and freedom of stroke.
Chromatic bodies and free filaments The artista does not paint, nor draw amnios in a naturalist styl. However amnios are present in a subtle, different way, with transmuted gesture and color. Benoit Mandelbrot says it with these poetic words: Les nuages ne sont pas des spheres,/ les montagnes ne sont pas des cônes,/ les côtes ne sont pas de cercles,/ l´ecorce nést pas lisse et/ l´eclaire ne dessine pas une ligne droite.
Los Amnios-2013 of this series are and are not amnios; they are more than amnios. They are paintings basically made from the artist´s automatism. They start from a concept and a mental reflection with egg shapes, almost embryonic with some organic mention (see numbers 1 and 2, for example), the series opens and sponges shapes that sometimes are subdivided in a kind of dialogue and chromatic tension, (numbers 6, 7 and 19). Life on the go, pictorial process without possibility to continue.
The artist often creates some spatiality or transparency between the bodies (number 20), building visually perceptible middle spaces in the painting. Shapes, pictorial bodies, they relate to each other in a powerful or dynamic way on the canvas..
The gestural stroke sometimes becomes a sort of filament as if it were a body of laces or quick arabesque sui generis, that mixes rhythms and colors with freedom and grace (numbers 16, 17, 21, 33 y 34).
The relationship between the colors of the different works is spread with predominant reds and blacks; powerful indigos and blacks (paintings 26 y 27) or soils and ochres that get close to nature.
Pigments are applied and spread with freedom until the painter ¨finds¨ –to say about Picasso- what he wishes for and finishes the painter completes his intervention with the dripping and spattering of the pigment.
A dismantling with each series
Estartús as Gerhard Richter –the great German painter of the XXI Century- does not want to become a prisoner of a style and that´s why he opens a closes an interval with each series. This is the best way not to manufacture paintings but to create works that respond in each occasion to a renewed investigation. The author dismantles each series with accuracy and reborns again as the phoenix. His art collectors are in luck and will be able to enjoy his Works from different stages, and to freely choose their favorite ones.
There are art collectors interested in works from different stages of a single artist. Artists such as Estartús are ideal for this purpose. The C.A.C of Málaga presented a private collection owned by German collectors focused solely in Richter. If you follow Estartús artistic career you will be surprised in each exhibition by a new plastic and conceptual concept. Each exhibition meant a step forward in his career. A collection of Estartus Works through his career is an epifany of artistic findings.