51. The Messenger

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51. The Messenger

Felix Aftene

1972, Vaslui

Estimate:

EUR 7.000 - 12.000

Sold

EUR 8.000

References

CHITUȚĂ, Alexandru Constantin, "Felix Aftene. Noi și Ele, o privire asupra lumii animalelor", Publishing House of the Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, 2022. "Felix Aftene. Arhitecturi ale memoriei", Polirom Publishing House, Iași, 2016.

acrylic on canvas, 90 x 100 cm, 90 Ã 100 cm, signed bottom left, with blue, "Felix Aftene"

Felix Aftene's works describe a hybrid world, inhabited by a broad category of allegoric characters. "The Book of Imaginary Beings" by Jorge Luis Borges is what inspires him when sketching some archetypal characters, which often inhabit the human subconscious. The artist flicks through his childhood inspiration diary and takes notes, this time in pictures, as entire pages worth of dreams and memories. He is a collector of feelings that can be transposed in art, as well as a metaphysical visionary who tends to lock within his canvases a universe defying the notion of time. He notably captures "the spiritual valences of man - man and music, man and theatre", and he also suggests an interpretation of the depicted post-modernist beings in a mythological key. Aftene is the artist in a permanent search for new shapes and lines, hence rejecting the classicism which would only bleach his canvases. He masterly manages to search the depths, capturing the human body as a temple. He lengthens, widens and squashes his heroes' silhouettes, assigning the human being a primordial place in his creation. Aftene's works are often enriched with the presence of the animal reign. Fish, birds or snails exist harmoniously alongside human or seraphic figures. His characters appear as travellers who permanently wander through an ephemeral existence. He abundantly uses shades of blue. This way, the geographical area of his childhood returns to his artistic creation, through reminders of Voroneț blue. In Aftene's work, blue appears in an oxymoronic association between flight and fall, as well as through the antithetic combination between energy and enthusiasm of electrifying accents, and those mellow brush strokes full of calm and melancholy. "The Messenger" is part of a broader series, rich in meanings, which the artist has developed across time by studying the complexity of the human being as well as the rendered archetypal symbols.

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