Contemporary Artists | Period Artists (A-H) | Period Artists (H-Z)
Alejandro de Narvaez
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Granada & GrapesIt is as if the viewer is seduced into playing a kind of illusionist game with the artist that forces careful examination of every detail.
Born in Bogota, Columbia, Alejandro de Narvaez pays homage to the Spanish seventeenth-century masters with their careful attention to surface textures, choice of objects for their particularly interesting shapes, and positioning on sills or ledges for dramatic effects. Narvaez displays his objects to take full advantage of their unusual forms and these most ordinary elements of the natural world are converted into works of art by the remarkable precision of his brushwork. Natural lighting captures the three-dimensional reality and physicality, while it greatly enhances the perception of surfaces and textures.
The artist's insistent naturalism, sharp modeling and direct presentation of subject matter, heighten their appeal of the objects to the viewer. There is an almost reverent quality to the way he handles each thing, composing them to emphasize their appealing shapes, and endowing them with life and vitality.
The representation of simple shapes is endowed with a poetic ambiance despite the confrontational power of their direct and frontal arrangement. The prominence of the individual objects as the subject of the paintings, each one given equal yet individual attention is emphasized by the lack of distracting backgrounds or competing narrative content.
