Note Critiche
Valeria Pontoglio’s works are full of enigmatic geometrical forms, labyrinths and ancestral symbols. The artist tells the story of humanity through ancient allegorical symbols. A mankind continuously searching for spiritual knowledge and immanent gods, always moving into the cycle of time, of life and death. The alchemy of her paintings expresses itself by a clean aesthetic, an elegant composition, the use of energetic lines, bright and uniform colours and gold, chemical element par excellence, linked to the idea of divine.
New forms of life take shape on canvas, animal and vegetable organisms decorate the artwork like zoomorphic and phytomorphic patterns, floating on a dense magma like on an amniotic fluid.
In Valeria Pontoglio’s paintings we can find the infinite circle of life covered by intricate mazes from which we can set ourselves free only finding our Arianna’s thread.n The inscrutableness of universe and spirit is synthesized in the artwork with thick, evocative lines and sinuous or geometrical forms that seem floating on canvas like on a galaxy.
The glance focuses looking at these images, seized by a kind of hypnosis that leads us back to the past, to the origins of the cosmos.
Comments by Francesca Baccalà
“I work almost exclusivelywith acrylic” says the artist, “even if I like to experiment with other new techniques. I prefer the large format.”
And in fact, they are really works of notable dimensions that demonstrate her imaginative ability and spread of colour, which spring from her genuine vocation of poetry. Observing her works, subjects and elements are scanned by a remarkable process that gathers the essence of what she wants to portray. One seems to recognise an extremely personal statement in a clear mood of recollection where colour becomes the authentic poetry of life.
Capo Testa, Mediterraneo, Amore and Psiche…… these are the names of some successful acrylics on canvas where the dimension of the memory appears filtered (with rare introspective and syncretic ability) through the lyricism of Valeria Pontoglio, in order to create a limpid composition where the eye alights on volumetrical planes rich in colourful rhythm. Furthermore, in the work of the artist is found a sensual movement towards a a meta-narrative syntax, which possesses the gift of the imagination’s dreaming and enchantment, fruit of a journey of research in continual progress, the evident symptom of a creative “gesture” that is maturing with moments of progressive development.
These brief notes are sufficient to understand how extremely easy it is to lose oneself in fields that reveal an unselfconscious ability to trace the lines of an infinite horizon in the imagination and to paint in a totally contemporary way.
Comments by Simone Fappanni
In both large and small works – acrylic on canvas – we find it is the drama of the drawing that is set as the basic structure of the picture, in so far as the images take shape in ample fields of colour, tending towards geometric forms. In the synthesis of smooth, clear colours the dominant colours emerge – yellow, blue and red.
The characters in an ever- renewed story in images flow together into autonomous structures, preserving however the traces of their primary origin, which remains at the centre of this happy and joyous creativity.
Pontoglio presents us with paintings that are more than ever before as deliberated and persuasive in their breadth and structural composition as in their intrinsic meaning. Her paintings set out with a precise and definite design project, as the starting –point for the development of her images, which are sealed with clear outlines and in a colour that both reveals and conceals.
The simplicity and dynamism of line unites happily with the values of the colours represented.
Comments by Enrico De Marchi
Valeria Pontoglio’s figuration is oriented towards a style that we could call modern surrealism, in the sense that she uses the specific norms of surrealism as they are, but deliberately abandons the realistic image to open herself to what we better know as abstract. Her works appear more than ever as deliberated and persuasive in their structure and composition as they are in their intrinsic meaning, which highlights clearly the artistic aspect of the work. Endowed with a serious course of study regarding design and the use of colours, Valeria Pontoglio is revealed as a mature and expert painter, demonstrating a seriousness of intent and finality that favour an interpretation of a logical as well as conceptual character. Her images are constructed with precision and a correct tonal balance, and become the expression of a soul rich in sensitivity. She is in continual search of pictorial values to exhibit with clarity of thought and without any chance improvisation. The various themes, transported into a visuality that goes beyond the descriptive fact, give reason for careful meditation, almost an introspective study of the world around us, with the strength to highlight what we understand is authentically lyrical.
Valeria Pontoglio uses her profound intuition to choose an almost innovative style to enter into an atmosphere of true poetry, while always maintaining the coherence of her personality, and attempting to offer a contribution to art that is, in our opinion, not at all little.
Comments by Lino Lazzari
A Bergamo woman artist has managed to find her own expressive voice. She has a well-grounded knowledge of the works of the great twentieth-century artists, and a good technical preparation.
Her paintings bear witness not only to her technical capacity but also to her diverse interests. It is in fact the passion for the sea, the amazement at archaeological discoveries, the love of travel and generally the emotions that these things give rise to which are the premises for her paintings.
Before she reaches for the canvas she revises the past. Only thus can her creations take shape, and only thus are they able to keep alive the sensations felt.
A careful observor of the outside world, Valeria Pontoglio passes with extreme grace from one theme to another, never disillusioning the visitor. And hence the series of lighthouses, amongst which “Capo Caccia” springs to mind, built on high cliffs, standing out above the drop to the sea, and the smaller-format “Ventotene da viaggio”, so called because the same subject is reproduced also in larger dimensions (mt.2.50 x mt.3.60), or still the gigantic head of “Medusa” and mysterious Greco-Roman fragments. And the fondness for memories of travels emerges also from the numerous works dedicated to distant lands, to the East, and in particular, to India.
The light, the atmosphere, the landscapes and the high peaks.
With just a few strokes the artist describes all the fascination of those regions. But also members of her family and close friends enter fully into the subjects chosen by Valeria Pontoglio. Anatomic details, like the hands and feet of her daughter, or whole firures, as in the her brother caught in a moment of rest or a woman viewed from behind with all her sensuality.
But it is not only the subject that is the protagonist of Pontoglio’s works. Light and colours play a leading role. Sure of line and attentive to the choice of colour, the Bergamasco artist shows a prefernce for the ranges of reds, bues, greens and yellows. Shrieking tones, deliberately chosen and always wisely juxtaposed.
Comments by Laura Piccioni
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