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Katia Jirankova Levanti

Exhibition Catalogue

 

"Family Values" 

             DOM NASCHOKINA» GALLERY                                 May –September 2011

Moscow 

Academic painter, Professor Boris jirku's speech for the opening at the Castle Dobrichovice 2014

 

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

I’ve known Katia J. Levanti now for a couple of years. I was her professor of figural drawing at Umprum in Prague, and then we were exhibiting together, as it should be, professor and his best pupil, in her new home in a new world, in New London, a beautiful city on the East Coast which was founded in the 17th century by English mariners, and ship captains with wooden houses reminding you of those brigs and clippers. 

In old England they had one house with a family and in New England another house with another family. Katia is also straddling between the old and new homeland, but her angel, Daniel, she is always bringing with her.

 

Katia’s body of work is already extensive, and here we will see only a part of it. It’s based upon visually posed questions concerning philosophy, the sense of existence, time and its flowing, between the material and non-material, emotions and ideas, and simultaneously, their answers - infinite longing, a whirlpool of energy which in the universe is left behind by the sensitive heart, love between man and woman, and the connection between all living beings. Her fundamentally sensitive and romantic soul is attentive to the beauty of our world which in her paintings she is trying to reveal and feel; they are not concrete people in historical costume in exactly defined modern space. Katia is living in the world of ideas and is only slightly connected with everyday reality. She is forming visions of her own world where all beings are brothers, and where we are not compromised by the achievements of a devastating civilization - here there is none.

 

Her artistic expression, while it appears connected to the Czech tradition - there are traces of Vachal, art brut Zemankova, the intensity of Toyen - it is entirely exceptional and unique to the current streams. They are paintings truly beautiful, transcending time and space, captivating the viewer and inviting him to contemplation and peace, and concentrated experience. 

 

Thank You.

 

Opening at the Castle Dobrichovice  

March 28th, 2014

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