My Passion for Colour
For well over 70 years I have been striving to express my vivid sense of colour through painting. I feel I fully realized it at last, when, at age 80, I switched from painting to collages.
Colour is at the centre of my being. As a teenager I was drawn to the German Expressionists in Berlin, Germany, where I grew up. They expressed emotional intensity through strong, bright palettes. Their colour pulled me in.
My early paintings reflect these influences and, at the same time rebellion against Hitler and the Nazi regime.
I took watercolour lessons at the Alte (old) Museum in Berlin and then at the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Vienna which was a branch of the famous BAUHAUS.
In 1939, after Hitler had invaded Austria, we escaped to New York City. I studied at the Student's Art League where the professors were George Gross and Hans Hoffman. My preference was for softly focused lyrical aquarelles.
When the family moved to Montreal in late 1940 I choose to continue my studies at the Musée des Beaux Arts under Goodridge Roberts, who became my idol. Arthur Lismer also taught there.
I had already turned 80 when I felt watercolour no longer served my need to find a direct way to what I was searching for.
Thinking it over, "Joie de Vivre" is not all I have on my mind when collaging. Part of it is also my loathing of the lack of good aesthetics in today's world. To me Post-Modern art is nothing more than an undue prolongation of cheap Pop-Art promoted by certain art dealers who take advantage of the untrained eyes of the new art collectors (the "Noveau Riches") by selling them Kitsch that has no depth and pleases immediately. And so it takes over the world, including tourism. Trained artisans in Africa and Asia no longer need to cultivate their noble traditional crafts. It suffices to offer tourists quick shoddy work, superficially "pretty", (it is a shame and I hope, not long lasting).
I studied Joesph Albers's work whose "Homage to the Square" somehoe showed me the way to Pure Colour, standing on its own.
To achieve my goal through the process of collages, I collected colour fragments from magazine-related sources and cut them into simple geometric forms with Cézanne often in the back of my mind, so the resulting abstracts had to be subtle but strong at the same time. The work became pure delight. Colour alone can express every human emotion: Warmth, Coolness, anguish, serenity, etc. (In my case it became a gift in old age, asserting my sheer "Joie de Vivre").
And - best of all: Colour heals
Eva Mendel Miller (August 14, 2007) |
Untitled - 2007
collage on canvas board, 8 in x 6 in
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