Thursday, June 7, 2018

Online Only Exhibition: Organic Geometries. June 8, 2018

We are pleased to announce a special online only exhibition, ORGANIC GEOMETRIES, featuring the paintings of Begoña Rentero.  The artist has kindly given The Island Gallery exclusive United States' rights of representation for this special, entrancing online only exhibition.  Begoña is know in this country for her magnificent paper jewelry; here we see another area of her artistic repertoire.

The exhibition opens June 8th.

Visit the exhibition home page.

Begona Rentero, No. 4.  Acrylic on canvas

Offering a leisurely stroll through our extensive online shop, artist Begoña Rentero 
takes us on a journey through her home of Granada, Spain, sharing broad vistas
and intimate snapshots of such landmarks as the Alhambra palace,
gardens, and fountains.

Well known for her magical paper jewelry, here Ms. Rentero shows her
command of two-dimensional artwork, created in her recognizable vivid colors
and bold strokes, delicate turns and misty reflections.  Equally, her work displays
an intense love for her hometown and its luscious environs, capturing both its
vibrant energy and pools of solitude and contemplation.



Begoña Rentero was born in Granada, Spain.  She has traveled widely, living
in places like Madrid, Malaga, Marbella, Seville, Albacete and Granada itself.
She studied art and jewelry at The Madrid School of Art, and Interior Architecture
in Granada.  She grew up in a family that had a profound respect for nature and
the environment. These early influences developed into a passion for organic
forms, color and movement inspired by nature.  Begoña later translated this
passion into a unique jewelry collection, whose colors and organic shapes of
flora and sea fauna inspire her hand-made, exquisitely crafted jewelry.

Her work, which is shown in various museums and art galleries in Europe and
the USA, has maintained  a certain constant throughout her career; that is, the
importance of the use of paper, color and the balance of forms based in reality:
Her involvement with paper, as seen in her jewelry, also comes through in her
paintings, in which paper has been a constant medium used in her creations,
considering its docility or ease of use, simplicity and lightness, its capacity to
absorb colors . One can see that all her creations are characterized by fantasy,
delicate, organic aesthetic, with a touch of glamour.  Begona believes that
life is better with a spoonful of sugar!


Begona Rentero, No. 14.  Mixed media on paper

Excerpts from comments on the Exhibition: 

Granada is a city of intense contrasts that glow against whitewashed walls,
a universe of life among gardens, alley ways, fountains, reminiscences….
It is the radiant light of nothingness and the colour that flows from it, that
moistens, resists and languishes; and always the white of origin, the ritual
white of the primer that extends under the sun.

Begoña Rentero is aware of the plasticity of light that must be decomposed
in order to create the world.  In her visual art, sensuality and illusion go hand
in hand: the colourful tint that inhabit spaces, the forms, and the illusion that
seems to float over mirrors. The artist wants to influence this colourist offering,
releasing the limits of the gaze and introdu­cing a note of slight transience.

The artist has chosen water and oil pigments as two routes of initiation. Water
is the soul of Granada. Her brush scatters water and ink with amazing drive,
spontaneous emotion and intuition nurtured from the eye, the gaze, and moves
the hand like a witness giving testimony to astonishment. The overflowing
colour navigates the white of paper lea­ving organic steles making Begoña’s
whites as dramatic as the colour that nourishes them… In her oil paintings,
there is also vast clarity, which is at once depth and not, opening
reflecting grooves under enamel brushstrokes. Inevitably, they
transport us to remote impressionist aspirations….

From her intimate experience with this magical environment, she invites us
to a shared enjoyment, because Begoña Rentero has profoundly penetrated the
rhythm, the passing aura of the orchestration. The scenery is of water and sky,
of cypresses that rise to sink their roots in their own reflection, on earthy
paths and lustful fountains. It is in the melancholic pulse of the southern
afternoons, along the lonely streets where one feels a placid remoteness.

Illusion, mirror, dream and voluptuousness.  In these works of art, there
are always basic elements for the delight and joy of living, as if we were
contemplating an imaginary city for the very first time that we would
have already visited in our dreams.  That fleeting vision still shines.

~ Francisco Sotomayor



Begona Rentero, No. 17.  Oil on paper
Please click on the photos to see details on individual artworks.
Access the full exhibition here:

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