Le Fish D'Avignon

Picasso was a 25-year-old Spanish immigrant to France when he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, working in a cramped warren of studios on the Parisian hill of Montmartre. The story of its making begins with hundreds of preparatory paintings and drawings, which he generated over an intensive six-month period, working out his ideas. They reflected Picasso’s responses to Paul Cézanne’s structured, almost sculptural depiction of objects and figures and his prismatic structuring of space in his still lifes and scenes of bathers. They also reflected his fascination with the African, Iberian, and Oceanic masks and statuary populating France’s ethnographic museums, as well as the lusts and anxieties wrapped up in his own, complex relationships with women.
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting, the work, part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, portrays five nude female prostitutes in a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó, a street in Barcelona.
Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none is conventionally feminine. The women appear slightly menacing and are rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. The figure on the left exhibits facial features and dress of Egyptian or southern Asian style. The two adjacent figures are shown in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, while the two on the right are shown with African mask-like features. The ethnic primitivism evoked in these masks, according to Picasso, moved him to "liberate an utterly original artistic style of compelling, even savage force
At the time of its first exhibition in 1916, the painting was deemed immoral
Les Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial and led to widespread anger and disagreement, even amongst the painter's closest associates and friends. Matisse considered the work something of a bad joke .
Prostitutes can be the beautiful subject of a priceless painting, so the Fish.
Not everyone understand my art, and that's ok,
I dont have to be understood by everyone.

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Silvia is an Italian/Australian artist, born in Rimini, on the East Coast of Italy.

After a diploma in construction and construction drawings, she received a degree in Artistic Anthropology from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna studying
Art History, Psychology, Drawings, Illustrations, Anatomy, Theatre, and, above all, she fell in love with Artistic Anthropology, thanks to the amazing teaching of the dearly beloved Mr. Roberto Daolio, one of the finest art curator in Italy in those years.

She studied Professional Make Up at the Accademia Nazionale del Cinema in Bologna and she extensively studied makeup across tribes, traditions, ethnicities, and contemporary anthropology.

Her artistic work is largely influenced by the art of Aubrey Beardsley, Francisco Goya, Lucien Freud, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, René Magritte, Klimt, Schiele, the Renaissance and the Baroque and Rococo landscapers, especially in Venice.

Silvia loves the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe, Edward Weston, and Erwin Olaf, and the performance of Matthew Barney, Pina Bausch, and the contemporary Italian company MOTUS.

In her illustrations, she works with pen, ink, watercolours and Pantone colours on paper. Mixed media can also include gold leaves at times.
In her paintings, she works with oil colours.

​The village of Santarcangelo Di Romagna, which is near to Rimini, is a town of painters and artists of all sorts. It is here, where Silvia formed her foundation for appreciating the beauty in simple things, and for finding poetry in the ordinary.

Why do we make art? Where does the inspiration come from? What are we making it for?
These are very important questions for both, the artist who wants to transmit 'something', and the buyer, who gets moved by 'something' in the artwork.
What it is? What's that something?

Silvia remembers when fish of many varieties, wrapped in old newspapers, having been freshly caught , were being passed hand to hand from the boats, to men and women on the docks which, early in the morning, were lining the harbour, on push bikes or just standing , embraced in the first light of the day, anticipating the arrival of the boats, with their escort of flocks of hungry seagulls.

​Fish are life. Fish are work. Fish are a blessing given from Mother Nature. Fish are simple yet beautiful in their simplicity.
Fish smell and are real like only fish can be.
Fish are part of our roots and heritage, a classic; They are a metaphor of life and a never-ending source of inspiration. ​
Fish do not discriminate; Fish know no borders; Fish only answer the call of Nature, they follow the currents and sometimes even go against it .
Fish works in groups, Fish dance, Fish sing, Fish are predators, and are prey.
Fish range from some of the smallest life on earth to the largest, and occupy waters from the North to South, East and West.
Fish have been feeding humanity from the Beginning and we should respect the Fish, Thank the Fish, Protect the Fish, learn how to live like the Fish.

Silvia is environmentally aware, she is not against fishing, unless its deemed as an unsustainable fishing practice, and is staunchly against the hunting of large mammals for any reason.
Only original works, made with love.

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