Contemporary Primitivism 21 april – 30 april 2015 , Melina Cultural Center Athens
Contemporary Primitivism 21 april -30 april 2015 , Melina Cultural Center Athens
Gabriel Grama – Universal Symbols
Picasso’s sources of inspiration had been a various until the African art exhibited a different way of viewing the world, something that is proved in his work ‘’ The ladies of Avignon ‘’ (1907). In his workshop, next to the immense naive –primitive paintings of Rousseau’ s , he kept sculptures from Oceania as well as African masks. One of the must , significant sculptors of the 20th century , Brancusi like many artists of his generation , was interested in the African art and other and primitive arts. His work ‘’ The kiss ’’(1908) , according to some aspects is considered to be the corresponding to ‘’ The ladies of Avignon’’ in sculpture.
Gabriel Grama, of Romanian origin and studies in sculture, remembers the traditions of his country and is influenced by her pagan worships and dances with traditional masks, as well as by the customs of East Europe, the Mediterranean, Egypt and North Africa. Through his paintings he talks about the universal symbols of life and fertility , as these exist in the contemporary world.
The focal points in his art are human beings (with central persons those of his wife , his son and his own) as well as their connection to nature and modern civilization. The mother with her child in her arms, the primitive dances and the buck as symbols of fertility are interlinked with forms that remind us of frozen buildings and cold machines. Forms which relegate to sculpture , bright colors which clash with one another (dominant is the presence of green and red that are used a lot in Romania ), patterns which refer to the linear design of Byzantine religious painting as well as the Japanese or Arabic type of writing , stylized figures in motion are what someone can seen when looking at the artist’s work . In some cases his human beings suffer from the civilization that they have created while in some others they dance liberated from it , wearing colorful tassels , fringes and earrings met at various customs.
The artist states that ‘’ Contemporary primitivism work constitute my effort to express my opposition to what modern society has offered and presented in the recent years. My 50 paintings , mainly medium sized canvasses , or some even bigger , were produced in the years 2010-2015 . Influenced by the Balkan folklore, mainly the Romanian , the folk art of Middle East and North Africa , I combine schematic elements with decorative coloring in my distinctive penmanship. A lot of automizations and ways of expressions easily identified in my paintings , stem from the Byzantine religious painting , which I studied for years in Greece ‘’.
All things considered , behind the technology and the stifling world of our day and age , the human beings of Gabriel Grama despite their evolution , have the same primitive instincts and the same needs, regardless of their origin with the result of becoming themselves a universal symbol.
Ira Papapostolu – Critic and art historian
