Inner movement – about the new pictures by Anna Lamberz
Do the pictures of Anna Lamberz really need to be explained and understood, or is it sufficient experiencing them? This is a spontaneous question when you enter an exhibition of her paintings. The atmospheres which radiate from the images bear witness to a deeply felt spiritual vision which is worthwhile.
But first some biographical notes: Anna Lamberz grew up with her family on the Sithonia, a peninsula in the north of Greece; her father, a Byzantinist, was based there on a long-term research project. The many journeys to archaeological sites, museums, and especially churches with their iconic representations, left a deep impression on her and a fascination for the mythology and the sacred, which still influences her artistic work. Already in her early childhood, she undertook long excursions alone along the coast and into the mountains. These early natural experiences and journeys into the solitude of nature characterize her work and inspire it.
She extended her study of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with a postgraduate study in art-therapy. Since 1995, she has been intensively studying contemporary, traditional African and Afro-Brazilian dance and Butoh, a contemporary Japanese dance.
When one speaks of painting, it is mainly about colour. And pure painting means that colour is used as the basic material of painting, without producing illusion. Colours are then both – image material and image. The intention is to free the colour from its function. The colour itself becomes an object and thereby acquires the value which represents the condition for the autonomy of the painted image as an independent reality. Lawrence Alloway, the well-known art critic from the New York of the 60s and 70s, said about the works by Marc Rothko: “A painting is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience.”
Let us look therefore at the pictures of Anna Lamberz, for which I spontaneously found the term “inner movement”. In her pictures, the effect of the colour is clearly transmitted. The mostly monochrome, sometimes also coloured, and complementary contrasts let the viewer enter into colour spaces. The eye recognizes colour fields, follows shapes and hazy figures. The image composition with simple forms of mostly geometrical character proves to be a clearly visible organizing principle of all images and leads back to a concentrated colouring life. It becomes clear, Anna Lamberz creates atmospheres. The colour is intended to evoke life according to its vibration, recall the qualities and aspects of man and his environment. The painter researches the various spectra that make up the “wholesome” whole. She transforms her elementary experience from dance, nature and music in colour and form. The expressive power and vibration of the colour in her pictures arouse sensations such as vitality, warmth, excitement, passion, but also peace, security or equilibrium. The pictures of Anna Lamberz, which I mean by “inner movement”, exert themselves with great force at this experience level.
The format, the dimension of Anna Lamberz pictures is related to human body size; I would say, as far as the arms reach while painting. It therefore requires the greatest possible extension so that the viewer can enter the space of colour. The raw materials of the paintings, the paints, are called chromium oxide green, phthalocyanine green, Ultramarin blue, Cobalt blue, Indigo, Paris blue, Indian yellow, light ocher, cinnabar and carmine red, Krapplack, Umbra natural and burnt, etc. but also and especially the gold reflecting the light in its special way. Anna Lamberz achieves a high pictorial and aesthetic quality using these materials in a continuous, carefully palpable painting process which has been developing over a long period of time.
Munich in May 2011, Reinhard Fritz, New Group, Haus der Kunst (Museum of Modern Art), Munich
