CRITICAL TEXT LUCIANO CAPRILE
Article on Arte In World n.1 December / January 2017 – Those lips of splendid vermilion
La pittrice declina La bellezza muliebre in un cromatismo di sicuro impatto
Refined seduction is entrusted to a female face or rather to the striking emphasis laid on lips that offer themselves and express their desire for attention and immediate perceptual conquest.
Cinzia Pellin conveys such emotions though hyper realistic, almost photographic images, where soft strokes allow very limited space for further tonal emphasis.
Pellin wants to inflect a delicate basis of extreme womanly beauty on the canvas, using it as a sort of support where she can graft colours and, in particular, that flaming red that suddenly lights up the scene and draws attention on a half-open mouth, bringer of promises and expectations, apparently about to step beyond the physical boundaries of the canvas, in order to seduce and charm the observer.
Only the eyes, lost in a blue-green dream, seem to partake in the emotional upheaval, by representing a more measured reference to renewable sweetness.
In the past, similar artistic interpretations involved the iconic beauty of Marilyn Monroe.
The same representative purposes characterise Pellin’s art and emerge, as a declaration of desire, in Il canto degli angeli and A cena col vampiro . In the latter work, the foreground is occupied by a glass of wine that represents a chromatic and material reference to a microcosm where all offers and calculated perdition stand. After giving due weight to this flirty narrative approach, we need to recognise the different interpretations of Cinzia Pellin’s works of recent years.
For instance, in Mutazione (2012) anxiety is represented not only in the woman’s inquisitive eyes, but also in that veil of purplish inhumanity that shrouds her face and delivers it to a reality that belongs to her no more. Other works offer moments of authentic grace and absolute pensive sweetness.
This is the case, in particular, of Innocenza and Il sorriso di Shirley .
In Innocenza, the chromatic emphasis on knots and fringes follows and highlights the hemline of the dress around the woman’s neck, while her eyes, of an intense, expressive green, consult the observer with polished provocation.
In Il sorriso di Shirley , the burgundy hues of the woman’s hat and dress capture a moment of flirty, cheerful levity and portray it in the calligraphic lines of her face.
Pellin’s technique consists in a different, fluid way of representing femininity and beauty through chromatic contrasts that allow the artist to display the pleasure of astonishment.
Finding an harmonious agreement between stroke and matter, between a narrative line and the colour density that accompanies it, in order to crystallize characters, is certainly not an easy task.
Nevertheless, Cinzia Pellin succeeds in achieving this difficult balance with just the right amount of narrative elements, without resorting to easy character description or merely provocative effects. The measured intentions of her female figures are detectable not only in graphics, but also in glances that reveal all the refinement and decisiveness of their souls
