Category: symbolism

Fabien Mrelle

Fabien Mrelle, “Pentateuque”, Fiberglass Resin Sculpture, 2013

The work of French artist Fabien Mrelle involves creative combinations of dreams, experiences, and his early childhood imagination. He blurs the line between reality and fiction. In his biography, Mrelle states: “Following the unrolling of a dream, playing with the free association of shapes and ideas, he seems to say that everything is transforming, metamorphing, opening itself to the most diverse interpretations.”

The life-size version of Fabien Mérelle’s “Pentateuque” was exhibited in Hong Kong’s Statue Square Garden from May 21 to July 6 in 2013. Presented by Edouard Malingue Gallery, the five-meter-tall statue made of resin and fiberglass depicts an elephant balanced on the back of a man. The male figure was cast from the body of the artist himself, while the elephant is modeled after one at the Singapore zoo.

“The work brings to real life Mérelle’s imaginary world, which lies between a dream and the existent,” says Jennifer Caroline Ellis from Edouard Malingue Gallery. “It’s implausible, yet, one comes to question whether it’s conceivable.”

“Pentateuque” refers to the first five books of the bible and the sculpture humorously alludes to the human propensity for carrying the weight of the world on one’s shoulders, metaphorically bending over under the burden of religion, culture, and society’s expectations.

Ivan Milev Lalev

Ivan Milev Lalev, “Krali Marko”, 1926

Ivan Milev Lalev was a Bulgarian painter and scenographer regarded as the founder of the Bulgarian Secession and a representative of Bulgarian modernism, combining symbolism, Art Nouveau and expressionism in his work. In 1920 at the age of twenty three, he was admitted to the National Academy of Arts in Sofia, where he studied under Prof. Stefan Badzhov, and had three one-man exhibitions. He also contributed to the communist comic magazine Red Laughter as an illustrator and cartoonist.

Milev died of influenza in Sofia on 25 January 1927, shortly before his thirtieth birthday. Regarded as one of the great masters of distemper and watercolour painting in Bulgarian art, Milev’s characteristic decorative style was much influenced by the European Secession, but it was also related to Bulgarian folk art and icon painting. Milev’s paintings are exhibited in the National Art Gallery and the Sofia Gallery.

Hugo Simberg

Hugo Simberg, “The Wounded Angel’”, Oil on Canvas, 1903

The “Wounded Angel” is a painting by Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg. It is one of the most recognizable of Simberg’s works, and was voted Finland’s “national painting” in a vote held by the Ateneum art museum in 2006.

Like other Simberg works, the atmosphere is melancholic: the angelic central figure with her bandaged forehead and bloodied wing, the sombre clothing of her two youthful bearers. The direct gaze of the right-hand figure touches the viewer.

The procession passes through a recognisable landscape, that of Eläintarha, Helsinki, with Töölönlahti Bay in the background. In Hugo Simberg’s time, the park was a popular spot for leisure-time activities among the working classes. At the time, many charity institutions were located in Eläintarha park. In “The Wounded Angel” the healthy boys are carrying the injured girl towards the Blind Girls’ School and the Home for Cripples. She clutches a bunch of snowdrops, symbolic of healing and rebirth.

Simberg himself declined to offer any deconstruction, suggesting that the viewer draw their own conclusions. However it is known that Simberg had been suffering from meningitis, and that the painting was a source of strength during his recovery. This can also be read metaphorically: meningitis is known to cause neck stiffness, lethargy and light sensitivity, each of which is exhibited by the central figure.

Odilon Redon

Odilon Redon, “A Knight”, 1885, Oil on Canvas, 53.5 x 37.5 cm, Private Collection

Odilon Redon, born in 1840 in Bordeaux, France, was a Symbolist painter, lithographer, and etcher. His work developed along two distinctive genres. His oil paintings and pastels were mostly still lifes with flowers; these gave him a reputation among Henri Matisse and other painters as an important colorist. His prints, however, were quite different, foreshadowing the Surrealist and Dadaist movements  with their exploration of fantastic, haunted, and macabre themes.

Redon studied under painter and teacher Jean-Leon Gérôme, one of the most prominent late 19th century academic artists in France. He mastered engraving under the tutelage of Rodolphe Bresdin, who was noted for his highly detailed and technically precise prints. Redon learned lithography under printmaker and illustrator Henri Fantin-Latour who became known for his group compositions of contemporary French celebrities.

Odilon Redon produced nearly two hundred prints, which included many series of multiple images. In 1879 he produced the lithograph series collectively titled “In the Dream”. a portfolio of ten lithographs. Redon dedicated a series to Edgar Allan Poe in 1882 which evoked the private torments in Poe’s life. His series “Homage to Goya” done in 1885 included imaginary winged demons and menacing shapes.

Odilon Redons’s lifework represented an exploration of his inner feelings and psyche. His source of inspiration and the force behind his work are explained by himself in his journal “To Myself”:  “I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.”

 

 

Agostino Arrivabene

Agostino Arrivabene, “Giorgio e Cief”, 2007, Oil on Wood, Dimensions Unknown, Private Collection

Born in 1967, Agostino Arrivabene is a visionary artist who paints surrealistic works. Influenced by Symbolist artists such as Gustave Moreau and Norwegian figurative painter Odd Nerdrum, his work features landscapes, portraits, and allegorical paintings often with apocalyptic themes. Arrivabene currently lives and works in a rural farmhouse In Gradella di Pandino, near Milan, Italy.

Arrivabene uses antique painting techniques to create a foundation from which metamorphic figures emerge in moments of creation. The time-consuming labor of grinding pigments and layering paints is evident in the complex, heavily textural works. In the late part of 2018, he began a new series of paintings using natural canvases , conglomerate mineral and woodland findings, to add natural textures to his surreal works.

Francisco de Zubaran

Francisco de Zubaran, “Agnus Dei”, 1635-40, Oil on Canvas, 62 x 38 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado

Francisco de Zurbarán was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.

It is unknown whether Zurbarán had the opportunity to copy the paintings of Caravaggio; at any rate, he adopted Caravaggio’s realistic use of chiaroscuro and tenebrism. The painter who may have had the greatest influence on his characteristically severe compositions was Juan Sánchez Cotán. Polychrome sculpture—which by the time of Zurbarán’s apprenticeship had reached a level of sophistication in Seville that surpassed that of the local painters—provided another important stylistic model for the young artist

Francisco de Zurbarán created a pure and intense religious visual language. He worked in Seville in the days when the Andalucían city created its renowned Holy Week rituals. In Zubaran’s painting “Agnus Dei”, a trussed lamb, bound for death, symbolises Christ.

Max Klinger

Etchings by Max Klinger

Max Klinger was a German Symbolist painter, sculptor, printmaker, and writer. Klinger was born in Leipzig and studied in Karlsruhe. An admirer of the etchings of Menzel and Goya, he shortly became a skilled and imaginative engraver in his own right. Klinger began creating sculptures in the early 1880s. From 1883–1893 he lived in Rome, and became increasingly influenced by the Italian Renaissance and antiquity.

Klinger was cited by many artists (notably Giorgio de Chirico) as being a major link between the Symbolist movement of the 19th century and the start of the metaphysical and Surrealist movements of the 20th century. Asteroid 22369 Klinger is named in his honor.

Images from Top to Bottom: “Pursuit of the Centaur”, 1881, “The Titans”, 1892, Metropolitan Museum of Art; “Abduction of Prometheus”, 1894. “Prometheus Unbound”, 1894