--Mario
Virgilio Montañez
--The
work of Nina Nolte is, strange as it may seem, utopian. She
portraits a universe prior to the expulsion of Paradise, with
clothes and attidudes strictly contemporary, just like the masters
of Renaissance and Baroque, who painted characters from the
mythologie or the Bible with garments and gestures of their
time. We find in Nina´s work a inalienable will based
on two principles: figuration - censured so many times and even
considered finished - and contemporanity. But at the same time
never loosing sight of her edenic vision of mankind. Looking
at her canvas and in spite of the discredit of painting in general,
in favour of more recent and less conventional artistic techniques,
no one could ever think that the subject has a dark side.
--Furthermore, that innocence
does not translate into candour, but serenity, dignity, like
in the wonderful portraits with a trait that owes as much to
Ingrès as tu Dürer. That is to say, in the awareness
of the prime of life and in the promises of the moment.
--Lets
go to do an excercise of fiction: imagine Eve on the first day
of her life, lets see her walk towards the Tree of Good and
Evill. In her hands not the fateful apple, but a brush or a
pencil. Around the tree – dangerous but with sweet fruits
– we see marigolds agitated by the joyous flight of the
bees. And Nina will paint them, as if it was the portrait of
a duke of the Quattrocento, but with pure and vibrant colours.
And then, “God saw that it was all good”, continuing
with the genesis style, Eve will go to her partner, under a
brilliant sun and she will also paint him. This is exactly how
any spectator can have access to Nina Nolte´s painting.,
a unique key to enter her paradise of perfect purity.
--In
debt as she to her german heritage, there is a rigour directly
inherited from the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), of which
it takes a preference for the definition of shapes, fot its
exactitude, but without the bitter elements, sometimes even
sour of this movement. We could even say that Nina Nolte submerges
the paintings of the New Objectivity in the californian swimming
pools, flooded wit the comforting sun reflections of David Hockney.
Examples of this concept are the canvases entitled Cherubini,
but it can also be applied to her great format portraits. The
result is astonishing: a reality that declines the hyperrealist´small
details, but that represents the prime of the bodies, the spotless
dignity, the simple elegance, the essentiality of flesh, the
celebration of the moment. This eternal instant: when there
is a sparkle in the glasses and the bottles stop as if they
were acquitted of being emptied.
--Everything,
in this world of vertigo and bustle, is to be grateful for.
As if her canvases redeemed us from our mistakes and faults.
Becouse painting is an image stopped in time, and it opens –
when it´s a work of quality – a window to eternity,
to a fixed and still time. In the case of Nina Nolte, this is
eternity, it is understood as motionless and timeless –
something that quite remarkable in her paintings. She offers
us flowers and people, landscapes and plants, animals and models
posing proud or relaxed, and always confident. This way, Nina
makes of every motif, of every subject a hypnotic piece, enhanced
by the natural coloured backgrounds that create chromatic effects
inside the best pop painting. Thus, each one of her canvases
becomes a votif painting, an icon sacredly lay, an opportunity
to discover the beauty that rests, stealthy, in every object,
in every person, without renouncing to the psychological depth
that we can find in pop artists such as Alex Katz.
