Jacqueline Unanue, Sextet III, Juan Orrego Salas
My Ancient Land, Jacqueline Unanue at 3rd Street Gallery
Jacqueline Unanue at 3rd Street Gallery, 45 N. 2nd Street, Old City, Philadelphia, PA 19106, 215-625-0993
March 30th thru May 1st, 2016, First Friday, April 1st, 5:00 – 9:00 pm, Artist Reception, Sunday April 3, 1:00 – 4:00 pm, Gallery Hours, Wednesday – Sunday, 12:00 – 5:00 pm
2015 – 2016 Traveling Exhibit | USA | CHILE | SPAIN – Sala de Arte, Embassy of Chile, Washington DC / Sala Viña del Mar, Viña del Mar, Chile / Casa Elizalde, Barcelona, Spain / 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia PA
Inspired by Chilean Classical Composers René Amengual (1911- 1954), Eulogio Dávalos (1945), Juan Orrego-Salas (1919), Enrique Soro (1884- 1954), Sylvia Soublette (1923) Jorge Urrutia (1905- 1981).
Curated by Gloria Garafulich-Grabois
Sponsored by Chilean Committee of Delaware Valley & Bloomfield Avenue Dental Associates
Artist Statement
“My Ancient Land, is related to my recent series of abstract paintings inspired by the music of Chilean classical composers: René Amengual: “Symphonic Prelude”; Eulogio Dávalos, “Cueca for Pablo Neruda” and “Siempre”; Juan Orrego-Salas: “Sextet for B flat clarinet”; Enrique Soro: “Danza Fantástica”; Sylvia Soublette, “Roman Mass”, and Jorge Urrutia: “Suggestions of Chile Op.1”.
Immersed in this music as I painted, I felt it flow through me physically and found myself expressing both the movement of the music and my own emotions in free and spontaneous brush strokes that are musical as well as gestural. The colors I have used suggest -in an abstract way-, my memories of the geography, the forest, the desert, the ocean, and the Chilean sky.
The resultant paintings serve as coded maps, leading the viewer to the Illo Tempore where, over time, our roots spread wider and wider until we are part of a universal root system without cultural, territorial, or continental distinctions. This origin intrigues me, and it spontaneously appears in my work.” – Jacqueline Unanue
Jacqueline Unanue, Fantastic Dance III, Enrique Soro
Reviews
The series expresses Ms. Unanue’s visual inspiration of a selection of compositions of an outstanding group of Chilean composers, who represent the “classical musical voice” of Chile in dynamic, vibrant and expressive works of art that have been created using different techniques and mediums but that convey the deep love of the artists’s native land and her understanding of the magic of these compositions.
Gloria Garafulich-Grabois, Curator, Founder & International Director, Chapter in Chile, National Museum of Women in the Arts, WDC, Director, Gabriela Mistral Foundation, Inc. [US]
In the artwork of Jacqueline Unanue strongly emerges a variety of primary lines, as signs of writing, which can be identified as very early graphic symbols: a Greek gamma, one soad or Arabic kaf, or a Chinese idiogramic sign. The strokes are primitive, as a plunge into the primary substrate of the language, as if these vibrant strokes were to bring close the ancestral language through another path. It seems that through these pictorial landscapes Jacqueline tries to connect with an experience of the word beyond its cultural divisions: primordial strokes. As chromatic dots and dashes with which many people of Aboriginal cultures decorate their bodies to connect with the “sacred time” of their ancestors, the root of their myths. These paintings hide from the superficial eye–just used to look for tones and chromatic harmonies–that telluric strength of a creative time, the signs that emerge to become name, magical, incantation. The primordial creative vortex.
Francisco Martínez Dalmases, Writer, Madrid, Spain
When Kandinsky comes to abstraction in the visual arts in 1910, he does it from music because music has always been, by nature, the abstract language. In her works, Jacqueline Unanue establishes a bond from her paintings–her interpretation of the music of great composers is from the motions provoked by a world of sensations; with strokes of great freedom to capture the feeling of extension to the body with this one motion, and not to allow the fusion of these two abstract worlds to be hindered by reason, even for an instant. We could say that Unanue’s works reflect the informal attitude of the action paintings of the 40s and 50s–like Pollock and also about her forms more closely attributed to the Armenian artist Gorky. This attitude is visible in the magnificently collection of her traveling exhibit starting in Washington DC.
Daniel Santelices Plaza, President of Valparaiso Art Critics Association, Chile.
click for poster
Biography Jacqueline Unanue, Visual artist
Jacqueline Unanue is a Chilean born visual artist of Spanish ancestry residing in Philadelphia PA since year 2000. She studied design at the Universidad de Chile de Valparaíso. At that time she became interested in the rock art done in her native country. She traveled extensively through Chile’s Atacama Desert, doing on-site rock art research in the mountains and cliff areas that contain art that was carved or painted thousands of years ago. She also traveled to Spain to study the pre-historic paintings of the Altamira caves in the Basque Country, which being the home of her paternal ancestors connected her to her roots.
In 1989, she won the Critic’s Award in Visual Arts from the Valparaíso Art Critics Association in Chile. In addition to numerous individual and group exhibitions in Chile since 1983, she has also been exhibited in Spain, Finland, Ecuador, Argentina, and the United States—in galleries in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. In 2013 and 2015 she exhibited in Barcelona, Spain. On two occasions she has obtained grants sponsored by DIRAC, the Directorate of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile for her exhibits at Guayasamin Foundation, Quito, Ecuador, and at the Inter-American Development Bank, in Washington DC.
In 2015, she received the Latin American Women in Art and Cultural Tribute recognition in New York. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her husband Ricardo Guajardo who is also an artist and designer. She is represented by the 3rd Street Gallery, Philadelphia.
Jacqueline Unanue, Suggestions of Chile V, Urrutia
Artist contact: jacquelineunanue@yahoo.com
Artist Jacqueline Unanue / Traveling Exhibition 2015, Philadelphia
Exposicion Jacqueline Unanue, Casa Elizalde, Barcelona, Spain
Recent Press:
– Washington Post, Washington DC, March 2015: Homage to Chilean music, by by Celia Wren
– Heavy Bubble, Philadelphia: http://heavybubble.com/artlife/january/2016/junanue-philadelphia
– Blog Corporación Cultura Viva, Viña del Mar, Chile: Jacqueline Unanue pinta desde la no conciencia: una abstracta lirica de sentimientos irrefrenables by Daniel Santelices Plaza, Doctor en Historia del Arte Universidad de Navarra, España, May 2015.
– El Mercurio de Valparaíso, Chile, Valparaíso, Chile, Pintora chilena vuelve a sus origenes con “Mi Antigua Tierra”, Arte y Espectáculos, Thursday April 23, 2015
http://www.mercuriovalpo.cl/impresa/2015/04/23/full/cuerpo-principal/26
– Impacto Latino, New York, March 2015: Mes Internacional De La Mujer en Nueva York: Homenaje a la Mujer Latinoamericana en las Artes y la Cultura, by Ximena Hidalgo-Ayala,
http://impactony.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/showlink.aspx?bookmarkid=D72JI46VU5G6
Thank you to Jacqueline Unanue for the content of this post.
Like 3rd Street Gallery on facebook
Like Jacqueline Unanue Art on facebook
Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on facebook
Follow the new DoNArTNeWs.com
Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58
DoNArTNeWs on Tumblr
@donniebeat on Instagram
Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line and help support DoNArTNeWs
Donate via safe and secure PayPal in the sidebar.
