Stefanie Schulte, Beneath the Blazing Sun’s Relentless Heat, 2021. Acrylic on Canvas, 76.2 cm x 121.9 cm.
OPENING EVENT: Wednesday 25 May from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required. Live music at opening event:
Vivaldi and more — Sopranos Greta Claringbould and Sarah Mann with Rose Holcombe, piano.
The exhibition shows a series of 12 paintings inspired by Antonio Vivaldi’s concert “The Four Seasons”. Vivaldi himself was inspired to compose the concert when he saw a series of landscape paintings by Marco Ricci. In this exhibition the music is translated back into 12 contemporary paintings. It is searching for a way to express the connection between baroque music, colour theory and geometric abstraction.
Baroque composers tend to work around very strong patterns of harmonies and clear, regular rhythms.
The primary and secondary colours are used here as two sets of triads which can be regrouped into harmonic and dissonant chords, drawing a parallel to the musical notes and exploring what happens when particular shades of colour are placed next to each other or on top of each other, as Josef Albers said “Hearing music depends on the recognition of the in-between of the tones, of their placing and of their spacing.”
The compositions of the 12 paintings connect to the rhythms of the “The Four Seasons: mathematic partitions of the canvas space and the use of repetitive patterns aim to create the pulse for the colour chords and also to reflect the poetic echoes in Vivaldi’s music.
Vivaldi’s melodies are surprisingly minimalistic in their theme and at the same time complex and engaging. These paintings seek such a balance, or that thin line between simple enough to pass on a clear visual message and complex enough to keep the viewer intrigued. The titles of the paintings are fragments taken from the sonnets Vivaldi wrote to accompany his concert.
Click here to download a copy of the exhibition catalogue.
Stefanie Schulte is a German artist based in Canberra. She studied Visual Arts in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain, and holds a PhD in Visual Arts. Initially she was a sculptor, then interrupted her career for her young family. Australia inspired her to reengage with creativity and to dive into the exploration of colour.