Olga Sinclair
_______________________
In the Interoceanic Canal
Museum
By: Mónica E. Kupfer
Art Magazine:
Art. Nexus No.50
Septiembre 2003
“Homage
to Michelangelo Buonarrotti, Sculptor” is the title of Panamanian painter
Olga Sinclair’s most recent exhibition, organized by the Mateo Sariel
Gallery and presented at the Interoceanic Canal Museum in Panama City.
The Show features oil-on-canvas paintings echoing sculptures by the great
master, such as the Night, the Dawn, The Rondanini,
Nicodemus, and Palestrina Pietás, and the famous Slaves. As if studying
human models, Sinclair based her paintings on these celebrated sculptures
from 500 years ago, many of which probably caused an impression during her
visit to Italy on the occasion of a recent exhibition of her work held in
Florence.
The
appropriation of models from the past and the practice of alluding to the
work of the Masters are common elements in postmodern art. Throughout the
years, Olga Sinclair’s work have quoted or paid homage to Dutch figures
such as Rembrandt, Rubens, and Vermeer, and her new move is coherent with
her artistic development. It is, however, a challenge, one not exempt
from danger, since the quoting of emblematic images can range from a mere
imitation of shapes to the reinterpretation of an atemporal aesthetic
message. It needs to be understood that in this series Olga Sinclair finds
inspiration in Michelangelo’s sculpture, not in his painting. The oft-repeated
assertion that even in his pictorial cycles Michelangelo was a sculptor
comes readily to mind. With this show, Sinclair the opposite relationship
– the case of an artist who does not practice sculpture but attempted to
reproduce on canvas the impact and the volumetric mass of those human
representations the Italian Master so skillfully achieved in marble.
During the show’s opening, Sinclair alluded to, and celebrated,
Michelangelo’s magnificence. She also acknowledged her first teacher: her
own father, the well-known Panamanian painter Alfredo Sinclair, who
distinguished himself for his skill in the use of color and his role as
Panama’s first abstract artist. Olga Sinclair’s work, in turn, manifested
a predilection for the human figure ever since her beginnings some thirty
years ago with early charcoal drawings of young women and black and white
studies of figures in sfumatto. Yet despite her focus on the human
figure, over the years Olga proved to be her father’s best disciple,
precisely through her handling of color in a career begun with a first
appearance at an art exhibition at the age of fourteen, and spanning until
today with some thirty individual shows in Latin America, Europe, and
Asia.
Already in 1982 José Gómez Sicre described Sinclair’s composition as
“subtle, evocative, subjective, and extremely lyrical, free of literary or
illustrative implications… she focuses on the human figure but provides
only a schematic vision of reality…” from those charcoal
Studies she moved on to working with pastels and oils, generally in small
formats, and she progressively incorporated color into hr work. These
were romantic compositions of isolated, languorous female figures, their
eyes closed or their face hidden as if immersed in a long sleep.
Sinclair, who for several years lived in Bolivia and then Indonesia,
intensified her colors, creating compositions in larger and larger formats.
Figures multiplied and gained strength, and so did contrasts of light and
shadow; the artist depurated more and more her stills lives. Behind she
left her tenuous dream-like atmospheres, albeit not the general somnolence
of her environments. In works with a newfound anecdotal character, women
or male figures such as monks or bishops appeared dressed and wearing hats,
surrounded by everyday objects, often as still lives on tables.
An
important shift in Olga Sinclair’s work occurred around 1999, with the
aptly titled “Renovation” exhibition. Filled with an innovative impulse,
Sinclair faced her true skill with color, leaving aside the anecdotal
figures of her previous work. With this, a period started where the human
figure was thoroughly subordinated to color, transformed into an element
for the transmission of humanity and dynamism. This shift was evident in
her images with faces as well as in her compositions of human bodies, now
nude or bathed in chromatic freedom, and also in new still lives in which
fruits became shapes, colors, and expression.
This
liberation has continued ever since. Sinclair’s most recent works reveal
an artist increasingly abandoned to the abstract values of painting and
the sensuality of the human form, be it in isolation or in dynamic,
overtly sexual poses. Even her still lives acquired a voluptuous
sensuality, something announced by her previous work but not fully
realized until now. Her best still lives are those in which there no
longer is a table or a tablecloth, empty cups, flowerless vases, but
compositional elements whose sole mission is color and which refer only
vaguely to everyday life.
The
current show is the result of all this development. Sinclair dares to
borrow figures from Michelangelo’s marbles in order to carry forward her
exploration of the human body but, above all, of color and sensuality- the
axis of her work. As a whole, the paintings on exhibit generate a highly
dramatic sensation of nude figures, of physical power, of an effort to
reduce everything to just the essential and to insinuate spirituality
through the depiction of mortality.
The
note of innocence struck by some of faces here is disconcerting, in
comparison with the emotional intensity that characterizes the Italian
originals. Similarly, some figures, despite their bold anatomies and
colors, lack the feeling created by anatomical drawing from life, the
moment when brushstrokes become veins and muscles a moment we appreciate
in Michelangelo as the result of a mastery that is worth imitating. As
whole, these paintings are a significant step in Olga Sinclair’s
development.
For
instance, in La Notte she presents sensuous three-dimensional body
that simultaneously conjugates its form with a salmon-colored background
with white, black, and red insertions. The human figure in Sinclair’s
second interpretation of the Rondanini Pietá seems to carry the
weight of the world in its shadow, as a echo of its contour. Equally
impressive are the figures of the slaves, titled Giovane, Atlante, and
Morente, with their contraposto positioning and the weigh of their
anatomies in an acid-green, Mannerist environment, very appropriate in the
context of this homage to the late Renaissance. In contrast, the show’s
well-crafted still lives seem utterly modern, and they reflect the
combination of unusual hues and passionate lines that this artist, at her
best, conquers.