Project Description

Print

overall dimensions : 70 cm x 58 cm

Signed lower right : the TSS

Female portrait with orange hair

Danièle Akmen (1945 Monaco)

She :

Akmen, that name received a Latvian father is translated into French as "stone". The first association that comes to mind after this discovery and knowing the artist is that of a stone course, but precious.

A brilliant diamond gently and never in all its facets simultaneously,like a vulgar and pretentious zircon,and outputting only a graceful fluorescence hues virtually endless only when the light to which it is exposed perfectly suits him.

A good look, always awake and always amazed. A peaceful face, rider, little marked by the passage of time. And especially, a delicate voice and so surprisingly soft that one might think it almost restrained or shy before detecting in it a remarkable gaiety and will. Here is Danièle Akmen.

Painting her, is just like the endearing but sometimes unexpected woman. Of his person, of his origins and his career, Akmen we only know a few facts.

The father :

The artist speaks little. Born in 1945 at Monaco, she grew up alongside a “lithographer” father, cartoonist-advertiser and painter-handyman" who, after having attended the Estienne school (Professional municipal school of arts and industries of the Paris Book) indulges in his passions and has fantastic penchant, from the perspective of a child less, to be curious about everything.

Daniele discovered through her drawing and color and developed a fascination for them which leads naturally to study at the National School of Decorative Arts in Nice and Limoges. Ensuite? Well Akmen lives, she paints and lives to paint.

"I collect as much as possible documents, d’images, photography, fabrics… I draw on layers. Color and design are inseparable, essential to signify vision, the intention, the design you want
share. And as said, a little girl of mine: It puts blue, green and after, she arranges. "

Today, she does only one or two paintings per year, painting remains his greatest occupation and above all his greatest pleasure. It is this ability and this need to paint that for example led her in the past to make very large canvases like an exceptional frieze of 2 meters on 18 composed with a finesse of inexhaustible and charming details that fascinate us ever more.

From its beginnings :

Throughout the years 1970, the painter likes to be both storyteller and magician. She carefully observes her environment, the document meticulously, studies it intensely then she tries to translate it and reinvent it in her studio.

A plethora of characters, all seeming to be part of the same timeless or diachronic romantic narrative, then appear and evolve within small ordinary and everyday scenes.

Toutefois, after a closer look, the observer quickly realizes that in these compositions with innocuous looks have slipped certain elements that one could easily qualify as strange see … fabulous.

The word is out. style and palette, anything but classic, come immediately to support and reinforce this first impression of marvelous and elsewhere. Bright and dense colors, elastic vegetation, iterative patterns to exuberance, faces with mesmerizing and hypnotized eyes, Western perspective violated.

We will understand, the universe that opens up to us is in fact far beyond the familiar. It is a dreamlike and fantastic world in front of which one cannot help but recall the universe of Douanier Rousseau.

Years 80 :

The paintings of the early years 1980 meanwhile testify to a change in the artist leading to a finer line and a calmer palette. The painter has changed pace, she became a mother. The fragmentation of his schedule, between his art and his family, leads to a fragmentation of the compositions leading in turn to a multiplication of elements and motifs.

The naive style of the previous portraits gives way to a disturbing rendering of realism and thoroughness. The magical and dreamlike aspect is always present, but otherwise. These are the staging or the meetings, more sophisticated and surreal, which henceforth perpetuate the supernatural dimension.

The compositions now count on the presence of characters with public identity and recognized. Freud, J. M. G. The Clézio, Greta Garbo, Tamara de Lempika, Frida Kahlo and Carol Lewis invite themselves to the canvas. The presence of these admired and inspirational figures also unveils a part of the inner life of the artist and in some cases, on reminiscences of his past.

"In the beginning, I invented characters such as those encountered in old photo albums, to tell an imaginary family saga. Ensuite, exposures that were offered to me offered me the opportunity to experience different spaces, unexpected decorations, other faces and thus guide the work I was going to show.

A Chalon-sur-Saône: the gardens; in Morocco: zelliges; Naples: Parthenope siren, the library to Aix-en-Provence: unpredictable associations of writers and painters. "

Now :

Then the years pass and the technique sharpens, sharpens. As a goldsmith, Akmen works ornaments with patience and passion to make treasures wrought. the fabrics, the tiles, plants, furs and exotic animal dresses compete refinement and elegance shine. Works of Akmen claiming the magnificence of nature decorative painting and managed to impose it in all its grace.

Sources : Artvera's Rue Etienne Dumont Gallery 1, CH-1204 Geneva -Switzerland - Exhibition 24 May 2013 the 20 September 2013.

A show of 12 min on RADIO CHRÉTIENNE FRANCOPHONE was dedicated to him in 2017 :

https://rcf.fr/culture/linvitation-au-reve-de-daniele-akmen

Another print by the artist is offered to you.