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Beelitz VIII, 2013
Mixed media on wood
30 × 40 cm
Signed, dated and titled on the verso
Provenance:
Studio of the artist
About the artist
The Italian painter Daniela Gullotta deals with architecture in her works, whereby she is particularly interested in abandoned buildings that have been left to decay. Their magic and silent visualisation of the past form the inspiration and content of her works. In 2014, for example, she explored vacant buildings in Germany in a series of pictures, including the former sanatoriums in Beelitz, an abandoned, partially dilapidated sanatorium near Berlin, and the ruins of the old chemical plant in Rüdersdorf (Märkisch-Oderland). However, the artist also focusses on architecture whose function is still preserved, as in her series on Cologne Cathedral. However, she exposes it to destruction in her pictures by depicting its interior with the floor torn open. On the one hand, the artist reflects on the ongoing construction and restoration work on the cathedral, and on the other, she poses the question of its possible future in view of people's dwindling commitment to God.Gullotta focusses her artistic research primarily on the interiors of the architecture, which she initially captures in black and white photographs. Mounted on a painting surface, usually wood, she works on and expands them using various painting and drawing techniques in oil, acrylic, pencil and charcoal. Mixtures of sand and colour, fragments of canvas and gauze give the pictures a relief-like quality and emphasise that the photographic basis is secondary. In this way, the artist transforms real architecture into a fictitious one and allows the mysterious atmosphere of the abandoned buildings, steeped in the past and the generations of people who once animated them, to become tangible.
Gullotta prefers grey tones in her works. These can serve as a medium for reflecting reality, as grey has had a documentary character since the use of black and white photography, as well as a form of reflection in painting, through which the viewer always remains aware that it is a picture. Coloured accents in the form of squares, rectangles in surfaces or outlines underline the basic geometric tendency of her compositions.
Daniela Gullotta, born in 1974, lives and works in Bologna. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and at the Royal College of Art in London. She has been exhibiting her works internationally since 1996.
Daniela Gullotta, who lives in Bologna, favours architectural ruins and thus man-made but abandoned existential spaces. As silent witnesses to the past, they exert a magical fascination on the artist, who studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna and the Royal College of Art in London, which is reflected in her pictures of abandoned spaces.
In 2013, the former Beelitz sanatoriums, an ensemble of 60 empty buildings built between 1898 and 1930 to the south-west of Potsdam and now a listed building, inspired the artist to create a series of paintings. Long corridors with open and closed doors, as in "Beelitz IX", stairwells and individual rooms, as in "Beelitz VIII", document the abandonment of the buildings and offer the viewer space to imagine and reflect on the past. Gullotta's work follows in the tradition of the aestheticisation of ruins, which first took place in 1337 by the Italian poet and historian Francesco Petrarca in his elegiac ennoblement of ancient Roman ruins as emblems of bygone times.
In her examination of architectural ruins, the artist prefers shades of grey. On the one hand, these allude to the material of the architecture, the stone, and on the other, they are associated with a kind of documentary character that results from the link between the grey scale and black-and-white photography and its function today. Last but not least, grey refers to the fact that we are dealing here with painting, with the reception of visible reality and not with reality itself, as this would be colourful. The light green colour that seems to take over the architecture in "Beelitz VIII" and "IX" refers to the reconquest of the former cultural spaces by nature.
In 2013, the former Beelitz sanatoriums, an ensemble of 60 empty buildings built between 1898 and 1930 to the south-west of Potsdam and now a listed building, inspired the artist to create a series of paintings. Long corridors with open and closed doors, as in "Beelitz IX", stairwells and individual rooms, as in "Beelitz VIII", document the abandonment of the buildings and offer the viewer space to imagine and reflect on the past. Gullotta's work follows in the tradition of the aestheticisation of ruins, which first took place in 1337 by the Italian poet and historian Francesco Petrarca in his elegiac ennoblement of ancient Roman ruins as emblems of bygone times.
In her examination of architectural ruins, the artist prefers shades of grey. On the one hand, these allude to the material of the architecture, the stone, and on the other, they are associated with a kind of documentary character that results from the link between the grey scale and black-and-white photography and its function today. Last but not least, grey refers to the fact that we are dealing here with painting, with the reception of visible reality and not with reality itself, as this would be colourful. The light green colour that seems to take over the architecture in "Beelitz VIII" and "IX" refers to the reconquest of the former cultural spaces by nature.