Štrba's Wuthering Heights

These days in Milano, Italy:

Annelies Štrba: mostra fotografica
8 December - 6 January 2008
Galleria Carla Sozzani
Corso Como 10, Milano

Press release in Italian (our translation)
On the picture(Source): Nyima 221,2005. Photograph on canvas

“I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind."

A phrase of Emily Brontë that explains the inspiration at the base of the artistic work of Annelies Štrba. A magic and entirely feminine world with her romanticism and her delicate, light, colourful folk intimacy: a sort of digital Impressionism which has been defined as "End-of-the-century, computer-enhanced Symbolism".

Deeply influenced by Emily Brontë's only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), illustrated by a young Balthus, Annelies Štrba captures the world by creating another bewitched and deeply symbolic,: ethereal female personages, suspended in the romantic drama and portrayed with the calm of an artist because, as she says, "the real world has always been too boring for me". "Wuthering Heights" is a romantic novel that represents the passion for the life against every adversity in the midst of the mysterious and otherworldly heather. This is very similar to what the artist is used to, as she has her studio near the Swiss mountains of Betlis, full of forests and inaccessible nooks which play a key role in her artistic production.

More information can be found on this db artmag issue:

In terms of atmosphere, Štrba's point of departure was the novel Wuthering Heights by the English author Emily Bronte. The book was a scandal when it appeared in 1847 – the story of an unconventional love that ends in hatred, revenge, and finally death departed too radically from the strict morality of the Victorian age. At the same time, however, the intensity of feeling that Bronte portrays in all its various facets became a tremendous inspiration for many artists of the generations that followed. In 1935, Balthus created illustrations for a new edition of the novel, of which Štrba possesses several original prints. She feels a close affinity to the painter: while Balthus repeatedly represented young girls in a surreal, highly erotically charged world of enigma, she seeks to demonstrate "how my images can also be about something that anyone can interpret immediately, but not really comprehend."

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Wuthering Heights