Featured artist
LeoNilde Carabba

“Art entered my life with the force and absolute revelation. I was still at the International High School and I understood that nothing would have been the same as before. I had found a center. A reason to exhist. Becoming an artist was then a long and troubled process, with setbacks and crisis, but doubt never entered, even in the most difficult moments, in this constant evolutionary process that brought me from Dark to Light. And when I speak about dark I am referring to the works of the early 1960s, well represented by the catalog of the exhibition presented by Baj, Crippa and Fontana at the “Cenobio-Visualità” in Milan in 1964. In these works you can feel the influence by Antonio Recalcati, whom I had known and attended at the beginning of my adventure, as well as the influence by Jean Dubuffet, whom I had seen in an exhibition in Paris. These works well represent the inner torment in which a difficult family situation had thrown me” (From an interview in the column History & Stories “In Viaggio con LeoNilde Carabba” by Fabio Agrifoglio published on September 22, 2016 on the website of the Collezione da Tiffany).

First experiments with light bt L. Carabba began in 1966, reaching through use of glass microspheres – a surface with luminous intensity and without mechanical means, which becomes variable based on the visual angle of the observer. In the following years, she ex experimented more and more different materials such as fluorescent, phosphorescent, wood, laser lights, with fluctuaqting plays of light and shadow, revealing her artistic concept, coerent with her personality as a charismatic and deeply intellectual woman. She has received numerous acknowledgments and critical text, including Riccardo Barletta (1969) “Several aeras of the surface are coated with fine, reflecting spheres incorporated into the paint, thus theviewer is compelled not to a static contemplation of painting, but to interact with the light and the space…” and again, Pierre Restany (1985): “it should be enough just to focus a moment’s on LeoNilde Carabba’s lyric morphology to grasp the obvious truth… this kind of painting is done with the skin, with heart, skin and blood”.

Many words have been said about the works and life of LeoNilde Carabba, an artist with a wealth of very important experiences to be considered among the greatest living italian artists of the 21st century. Yet despite her long career, studded with events and great frienships – I think of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lucio Fontana, Carla Accardi, Piero Manzoni, Tancredi, to name a few – Carabba has established a much more authentic relationship in the field of art: that one with herself, experiencing her life through color, various materials and inner research. This her gait in creative and expressive research has led her to create a unique genre that differentiates her from her coetaneous: everything starts from the analysis of a Jungian matrix and from her interest in the symbol and the spirituality, in line with her being a woman and artist together.

The “mystical martiage” – declared in her poetic mentions – become a fruitful moment of her own name “LeoNilde”, composed of a male (Leo) and a female root (Nilde) and aimed at underlining her destiny. Two name orv two different beings who incarnate bfluidly in a single person, and who marry in an alchemical and totalizing journey that reveals the different facets of the human being. The “Women’s Movement” becomes for her a trait d’union and subsequently an expressing her emotions through art and increasingly refining, thinking skills. A re-birth trough a “symbolic mother” who becomes a friend in solidarity with her nature as a woman and which nourishes the artist – also trough the study of astrology – the passion for much more intellectual and profound concepts.

Her unconscious path was aware, that is, it was to cross a labyrinth where it is easy to lose the coordinates, and the idea of being able to walk it with one’s feet was more rewarding, allowing the artist to process new segments of life and new visual geometries, which over time have probed her perception of the work of art and life. And so she starded a research light years, away from the monochrome and reflective models of the past, to enhance every stylistic aspect from the idea to the shape, from the equipment to the color, experimenting the duality between dark and light, between empty and full, in a continuos play of echoes and references, in a flow of perspectives and sound modulations, finally reachin Light Art, in which she actively recognizes herself.

On the other hand, meditation and the practice of holistic disciplines leads the artist to a greater concentration of herself, thus experiencing an energetic condition that favors the maximum expression of her talent, achieving performances of exceptional value. From the state of trance to the sensation of rhythm, from sound to color, her works spred like “autochthonous beings of light” who live in a timeless dimension and in total connection with the observer, involving him in a sort of expansion of consciousness, just as happens in the state of “energy flows” that give welfare to those who give band to those who receive. In addition to the painting works, visible in daytime and at night with wood light – thanks to the phosphorescent, fluorescent colors. Finally, LeoNilde Carabba, who has the charisma of a shaman, shows the movement, the word, the ritual, the technique, the modulations of light and dark, according to a constructivist psychology, which has its counterpart in the alchemical and esoteric phases linked to the awakening of consciousness, to the intention of divine and human nature, to the harmony of the relationships of one’s essence.

Text fragments of Dores Sacquegna from Macrosfere Alchemiche Catalogo Mostra ART WOMAN – Fondazione Palmieri 2020 – Lecce

more. www.leonildecarabba.it

Image courtesy of LeoNilde Carabba

Image courtesy of LeoNilde Carabba

Image courtesy of LeoNilde Carabba