ANNE-LISE COSTE
2016-02-29“L’art de la joie” (The Art of Joy), is also the title of a flower still life in the show, and is taken from the literary masterpiece by the Italian author and actress Goliarda Sapienza. The book, written in the years 1967-1976, was published only after the death of the author in 1988. Last year, a brand new French translation gave Anne-Lise Coste, who is an avid reader, inspiration to some of the new works presented in this Stuttgart show. Like the author Goliarda, the heroine of the book has an unusual name: Modesta. She comes from a very poor background and marries into the top of the Italian nobility. Modesta’s formidable character and high social status gives her the power to rebel against the rigid constraints of Sicilian nobility, and to say, do and think exactly what she feels like with an authenticity and integrity, which is also characteristic of Coste.
The personality of the artist is present in every single work she makes: “It’s always me” Coste would say when describing people, places and situations depicted in her compositions. Since the very beginning of Coste’s career, the role of the female artist in an overwhelmingly male dominated environment and the permanent battle for visibility has been a theme expressed in her work, subtly or forcefully. In this show presenting primarily recent and exuberantly colourful works on paper, but also some calligraphic paintings from the end of her New York years, a group of works is called ”writings and other forms of life“. In it, ideas and feelings looking for explanation or expressing frustration with the state of things come to life through text fragments and poetic calligraphic patterns. Political and personal, intimate matters like loneliness and self-criticism are often expressed within the same composition. But also joy, enthusiasm, passion, hope and humour – the whole spectrum of authentic emotion. There is no adherence to rules or constraints of stylistic or technical nature.
Opposite – L’Art de la joie, 2016
Exhibition runs through till March 24th, 2016
Galerie Reinhard Hauff
Paulinenstrasse 47
70178 Stuttgart
Germany
