Why is it that a black cat crossing one’s path will bring good luck in England – so long as it crosses from left to right – but bad luck in Italy? Black is such an ambiguous colour! Associated with evil, dark forces, violence and death it is also related to authority and justice as with the cloaks of judges and academics. Regarding dress how can a colour be connected with totalitarian shirts and, at the same time, remind one of that little black number worn by Audrey Hepburn in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’? Sadly for many the colour is the black dog of depression. These thoughts entered my mind while artist Delfina Nahrgang guided me through an exhibition of her paintings on display at Bagni di Lucca’s Corona Hotel since October 10th. Delfina, who has a studio in New York’s Manhattan and, since 1981, in Italy’s Pietrasanta, eschews labels affixed on her work. However, it is clear that her artistic journey owes much to abstract expressionism, a movement which turned the Big Apple into a newly pulsating arts centre. Delfina mentioned the names of some painters she felt an affinity with: Robert Motherwell, that most refined of abstract expressionists, Willem de Kooning and the surrealist Max Ernst.
Looking at the canvases displayed in the hotel, happily reborn in its picturesque riverside setting, I sensed the power of black both liberating and controlling the surge of colours emerging from the depths of metaphorical caves and canyons within a redefined space-time continuum. I was intreagued by the dialectic between the paintings’ visual message and their titles, bestowed by Delfina’s literary husband. ‘Opera’, for example, invites one to dream of plush opening red curtains, spectacle, expectancy, the radiant oscillations of musical sounds.
‘Bagdad ‘, on the other hand, with its suggestion of crude power and primeval jungle, paints a harrowing battle between positive and negative forces and is as direct an emotive reaction to the Iraq war as Motherwell’s ‘Elegies to the Spanish Republic’.
Of particular relevance to today’s health situation is ‘Masks’. Here swirls of colour seem to liberate themselves from the blackness. A white mask emerges, there are shades of lagoon waters, of secret liaisons, of midnight trysts. But is this a festive carnival or is it a dance of death?
Most of the paintings use oil but there are two delicate works in pastel which the artist says she rarely uses. Delfina is also a wonderfully fluent watercolourist.
Few artists enjoy labels fixed onto them. However, I felt that in any art history book Delfina may safely be placed as one of the finest Colour Field movement painters of contemporary times. Her creations have both power and delicacy, forcefulness and lyricism. Above all they encapsulate an originality and an honesty all too rarely found in today’s artistic universe.
The exhibition was due to close at the end of October. Let us hope that our persuasion to have it extended is possible for it would be a real pity to miss Delfina’s art.