ANTONIO MALMO, International Art Critic, Expert in Modern Art. Critique for Diane Holland, Artist.
Antonio Malmo (Translated from Italian):
In the international context of the figurative arts, we noticed that during the last 60 years, artists' works are lacking some valid themes which introduce some interesting problems surrounding their inspiration, their fantasy and their creativity. However, I found very valid and unique qualities while exploring the culture of the American painter Diane Holland, and for this reason I'm very happy to write some critical notes about her personality and about the excellent quality of her artworks.
Hers is a natural force, a variegated capacity to receive in her spirit the immensity of the versatile human experience!!!
As we can note, her pictorial world develops in a heterogeneous search of form and of colors, of spaces and geometrical figures between mysterious silences and infinite spaces. Diane Holland has energy, imagination, vitality, creative power and expressive strength in the unity of pure emotion, shrewdly and sincerely painted on the canvas with innermost sharing. The serenity of the spirit is very important for this painter.
Diane Holland studied and assimilated the art of the past, and all of the twentieth century that we leave behind, on our shoulders. She surpassed all this gold thread, as an original voice in the sea of the experience of life, on which her work sails, loaded with charming mystery in the vanished atmospheres of solar time, the splendor of a symbiosis where she knows to include her voice.
Storyteller of colors, the artist speaks, and tells with her vital rhythm of her worries, of her joys, and of her emotions, felt in the instant of inspiration. And her language, very mobile, does not have frontiers...so that the acquired picture connects -in the abstract/geometric current - with signs, symbols and codes, very personal, inspiring herself to innovation. This is a conversation, composed with the language of the artist, with her internal worries, with her own label of "pictorial current", which can't be limited, because she is dynamic in her paintings, which changes by her life, and is a way to create a personal chromatic dictionary, with power, with energy - conversations which are basically Neo-Romantic.
The painter is sincere, genuine, authentic and spontaneous. She observes the reality around and strains the humors and welcomes the expectations and the expectancies with an expressive power of humanity, which she transports and carries to the canvas.
Also, the colors, vibrating, ringing, luminous, have a remarkable importance because, again, we celebrate her simplicity, her spiritual wealth, her soul's force, her humanity's energy, her positiveness.
The dramatic strength of the human experience, the vision of the surrounding environment, the beauty of the universe in her compositions seem to lose their dimension, their reality, and they develop into extraordinary abstract-geometric compositions, singular, unique, between signs and symbols, which clear up wonderfully the meaning and the message of the work.
In my opinion, we must put in evidence that Diane Holland expresses through her painting, as well as her intention, to live in a world and human condition where it is still possible to have a dialogue between men, and where the human being can again try to laugh, to joke and to be enchanted by the sunset, far away from the pollution and from the incessant run to consumer goods and to social escalation. For this reason, we can affirm that the artist is rich in warm accents of lyric poetry, tools of the spirit, which ravish us all.
Diane Holland can re-create her spiritual world on the canvas - with thousands of psychological nuances - her perturbations of woman, of artist, using a valuable harmony of signs and colors among images which contain profound meanings. Guising, dynamic, lively her spirituality!!! Her artistic personality is no doubt very living, remarkable, efficacious, modern, and openly participating with the thousand problems and at the learning themes of our times.
We must agree that her creed in the art surmounts every frontier and every barrier of currents and of styles of the present and of the past, and wakes oneself in virtue of a creative strength, particularly fertile and singular in the modules and in the models. I could list all the wonderful works of Diane Holland. I cannot. I'll list only some, just at random: "Mystic Encounter"', "Dynamic", "Live Connection", "The Ninth Woman", "Exuberant", "Abstract Rhythm", "Lines of Illusion", "Time Exploration", "Midnight Splash", all of which in my opinion represent the marvelous synthesis of her human qualities and of her irresistible expressive capacities.
We've noticed these have dynamic propulsive energy, which involve the intricate soul's conditions, and which treat the hidden twists and turns of her spirituality, all which the artist has explored through her paintings, visible beside the variegated images of the nature of contemporary society, with an attentive analysis of the anxieties and dreads of varied nature experienced by contemporary man, through an expressiveness always to the badge of originality and to the idea's singularity, to the propositions, thoughts, programs, technical and practical answers always brilliantly solved thanks to her vitality, to her spiritual energy, to her positive creed in life and in art. I can say that in her painting the colors' brilliance mirror the faith's sense in society and in life itself.
When Diane Holland is in a more tranquil psychological condition, when life's circumstances of every day offer to her some instance of spiritual peace, the atmospheres of her compositions acquire some chromatic and graphic valences, which are very dear and appreciated by the impressionist painters. The stroke of the brush becomes sweet, delicate and brief, and a halo of mystery and of mysterious charm winds all the way through the context of the canvas. With her velvet stroke, she renders particularly suggestive nuances of colors. The sign is less incisive, the outlines of the painted objects assume some aerial, ethereal valences of extraordinary chromatic charm. In my opinion, of her very notable qualities, purely pictorial, what is particularly noteworthy are the spatial powers and the liberty to interact, sign and use colors to obtain her art works.
All this, at the very least, does not begin to embrace a discussion of the oneness of her style, because her palette is very moved and variegated, and her extreme sensibility and her expressive strength are exceptional, and the painter is able to express herself with different rhythms and timbers of varied intensity.
I do not like to be wrong, and I affirm that Diane Holland has undoubtedly natural endowments which are aligned with the times and with the figurative arts. I affirm that the artist has deserved the flattery which consents from the public and from the criticism in the past.
In conclusion, in my opinion, Diane Holland is a woman of great personality, endowed with poetical spirituality and with notable artistic experience, at this, the beginnings of the third Millennium.
AD MELIORA!!!
With esteem,
ANTONIO MALMO,
Critico-Experto d'arte Moderna"
photo: Diane Holland
Antonio Malmo, Expert in Modern Art, International Art Critic, Accademia Di FirenzaInternational Art Critic PRESS RELEASE:
Diane Holland at:
AMSTERDAM WHITNEY INTERNATIONAL FINE ART GALLERY, Chelsea, New York:
Ruthie Tucker, Executive Director, Curator:
Contemporary California painter DIANE HOLLAND's incandescent, abstract canvas paintings are spectral optical projections which ignite human consciousness into thoughtful contemplation of universal desires, emotions and experiences. Entering the glimmering world of Diane Holland's intriguing artistic visions, one finds a horizon sparked by rich hue, magnetic texture and visceral mood. The illuminated fluidity of her expressionistic work alluringly reveals personal and subjective emotional reactions, providing her audience with a window into the complexity of her poetic ideas and intelligence."
photo: Diane Holland
Amsterdam Whitney International Fine Art Gallery, Chelsea, New York PRESS RELEASE:
Diane Holland, at:
AMSTERDAM WHITNEY INTERNATIONAL FINE ART GALLERY, Chelsea, New York:
Ruthie Tucker, Executive Director, Curator:
"FROM HERE TO INFINITY" April 10 - May 5
Piet Mondrian once stated: "The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty." Contemporary artist Diane Holland's oeuvre of compelling abstract paintings exemplifies this statement, capturing the "emotional beauty" through the use of geometric forms, robust color and powerful lines. Ms. Holland's artwork is evocative of the "De Stijl" or Neoplasticism style of Piet Mondrian, which sought to convey the ideal symmetry and purity through art, and which is characterized by primary colors, bold lines and geometric composition. Moreover, Ms. Holland's artwork adopts the "De Stijl" aesthetic, yet is infused with an individual, dynamic energy, culminating in charismatic and wholly innovative canvases.
Ms. Holland's paintings have the essence of a superb jazz melody. Her lines and forms begin straight and steady, then "rift" into spontaneous curves, twists and abrupt drops--like the soothing yet improvisational sounds of jazz. Round shapes with curling tail-like appendages appear like musical notes; the extended "tails" spiral throughout the space in an organic manner, reminiscent of the curvilinear forms of the Art Nouveau architecture and design.
These "note" like elements are set against the backdrop of vivid primary-colored shapes, in hues such as lemon yellow, cherry red and royal navy blue. The use of many geometric forms--juxtaposed with one another--engenders a sensation of rhythm pulsating through the canvas.
Ms. Holland often utilizes a prominent black backdrop of paint, which accentuates the primary colors' vibrancy. Mr. Antonio Malmo, Critico-Experto d'Arte Moderna at the Accademia Di Firenze in Italy, describes Ms. Holland's art as a "natural force", intending to lead the viewer into "a different world and human condition where it is still possible to have the dialogue between men and where the human being can try to laugh, to joke and to be enchanted...away from the pollution." Hence, the purity and the "joie de vivre" of Ms. Holland's art embodies a Utopian hope which is communicated by means of the canvas for the viewer to be able, if only for a short while, to exist in a purely positive space.
Ms. Holland's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, London, Spain and Italy. Ms. Holland has recently been given the honorable appointment of Knighthood by the Ordine Academico Internazionale in Italy. Amsterdam Whitney is proud to shine a spotlight on her work.