Erica Calardo, Ancestral Truths

Erica Calardo, Ancestral Truths

Curated by Mariagrazia Minio Director CCM Museum

Erica Calardo was born in Genoa in 1980, but lives and works in Bologna. The artist offers us works with a retro taste that fascinate the viewer with captivating female figures, in a whirlwind of sensations linked to mystery and magic.

The fascination of the past evoked in the figuration of Erica Calardo is certainly not a new thing in the experience of art, testifying to a long sequence of explorations translated into movements or artistic currents often presented with the prefix “neo”.

A neo-Gothic style proposed by the artist that incorporates nuances and sensations of other times, translated into the canvases with the peculiarity of a palette full of nuances, glazes that reveal hidden worlds, as an expression of a creativity transferred to its perennial relevance.

Along her journey, every purpose of her monopolizes the inspirational momentum, settling in a more detached meditation.

In the work “the peace of the roses (Elizabeth of York)” the figure is striking, the transparency of the soul, as if it wanted to come out of the canvas, detaching itself from its material being, like a thought of waiting for a love that must arrive , comforted by the scent of flowers in her sweet expectation.

A work created with soft and enveloping glazes. A palette of simple colors that gives an idea of your own style.

Images are the oldest form of projection of reality. The figurative has dominated the art scene for centuries as evidence of posterity for a tangible perception of the world and the society to which they belonged.

Her momentum generates creative fervor and balance through tension and serenity, one plans, one defends, one believes.

In Erica Calardo the inspiration goes beyond and does not stop only at the well done work, or in the dream symbols, but also tells the moods of the human being, with his fragility and his ambitions, in which the features clear-cut, confident and imaginative dialogue with the viewer.

The technique employed is never neutral, on the contrary it imposes a decisive weight and conditions its content.

And this is how time stops in the canvases in an existential desolation of a being who is master of many things, full of objects which in Erica Calardo’s painting become pure instinct mixed with intuition, revealing a present that is already inevitably a future in the which we recognize.

Then here appear esoteric symbols, which free us from the prejudice of not being accepted, losing sight of the real essence of truth.

Erica Calardo’s works enhance the ephemeral, reveal the real relationship between man and magic, between material and immaterial, between genius and instinct, almost an obligatory step, a certainty in an uncertain society that has to undermine its canons in order to return to be free.

As Picasso said “…paradoxically, painting is the job of a blind man. He paints not what he sees, but what he thinks, i.e. he tells himself about what he has seen…”

What has been said above is presented as a justified premise for the critical examination of the art of a figurative painter such as Erica Calardo, who has gone through a series of experiences always adhering to the contents of reality, in an expressive artistic rigor that denotes a passionate commitment that transforms his art into a language of great originality. Prominent accords of the line, pure perspective wisdom, strong spatial feeling are elements that determine, in the finished work, not only a beauty of form but a complex of feelings relating to culture that make the artist a unique interpreter of the truth.

Her peculiar pictorial interpretation goes far beyond the representation of reality, each painting of her is a poetic tale that leaves its mark.

More real than reality, a realism recreated by an elegant search for colors, captured in the moment to go beyond the visible on nature, on beauty without neglecting fragility and weaknesses.

This is Erica Calardo.

Mariagrazia Minio

CCM Museum Director