Critical references

It is worth to settle from the very beginning that a consistent record of personal exhibitions and participation in national and international manifestations is not necessarily an unchallenged proof of the value of somebody’s creation. More than a decade ago, when I saw Luminita Gliga’s first creations and I spoke at the opening of her personal exhibition about the doubtless promises that could be deciphered in her works, I could not guess the spectacular evolution this painter would have.

One cannot tell about her that she hurries slowly; on the contrary, her courageous evolution proves an unusual passion and impulsiveness and is placed under the sign of a duality between the violent _expression, endowed with the shocking power of the cry, and the harmonious and unitary one, that attempts to rule the form. In a relatively short period of time, she assimilated a faultless technique of representation and, working under the pressure of an ardent artistic temperament, she does her best to guide her energies on the track of a solid fine structure.

Today, the painter practices an art that abandons the passive reflection, instinctively getting involved in an interpreted representation, as much expressive as poetic, of the reality. Form becomes an attribute of colour, a way of being, communicating and intercepting it. Through a good calculation of the echoes and bringing back the shades, the balanced order of the spots, the alternation of warm and cold nuances, rising all the problems connected to the fine organisation of the image, the artist has as final goal the aesthetic pleasure, the pure joy of the retina, to which colour and material, usually abundant, subordinate. Her outlook is close to the decorative style, allowing slides to the abstract world.

Aiming at finding an aesthetic formula that uses a simplified and categorical clipping of the forms in a two-dimensional space, with an always-intense range of colours, the artist conceives compositions dominated by the ceaseless thrill of the coloured surfaces. Going back to the idea of the precociousness and rapid maturation of the creator, whose inner tensions have maybe revealed too soon into a creation where the self-knowledge level does not allow her yet to develop her own fine way of _expression, Luminita Gliga’s work impresses through power and proportions, and its evolution points out the discharge of her whole energy in the creative gesture.

Through ratios of lines, forms, shades, through the rigour of the touches and the use of gestures, the images offered by the artist instinctively invoke the restless abyss of the human being. The experiences of the artistic evolution of a creator follow a sinuous way and take time, with spectacular denials and categorical changes of attitude, always amoung the limits of a native talent. There is a natural consonance between Luminita Gliga’s restless nature and her creation, made up of touches with a great inner tension, almost masculine gestures and a favourable endeavour for a stylistic achievement in which the good taste is a continuous stimulus.

The artist’s exhibition brings a fresh and young air, and the viewer is able to discover a surprising universe of forms, sparkles and colours, miraculously rich and spectacular, a recreated reality, that reveals an entirely personal equivalent of the visible world, an universe in which Luminita Gliga evolves with talent, grace, intelligence and sensibility.
 
Veronica BODEA TATULEA
Head of department – The Art Museum of Brasov
October 2005

Luminita  Gliga is a young artist born in a Transylvanian family of creative scholars. She studies at the National Art School of the University of Bucharest , yearly exhibits at the Art galleries in Brasov, the city of her birth and later in Paris, Cannes and Marseilles. Constantly striving for plastic refinements in her work, Luminita succeeded in combining the love of nature with the culture she acquired. Though belonging to the old symbolist tradition, she combines her work to the modern collage school of design both harmonious and violent combination which range from ochre to black – her painting is at times very colorful and bright but can be dull in her acrylic work. The artist went through different phases, pagan and Christian to Ephesus and mental one to the Apocalypse. Recently her name has been mentioned in the prestigious review ‘Univers des Arts’ and I wish her future as bright as her work..
 
Răzvan  THEODORESCU – Member of the Academy

Luminita Gliga’s highly elaborate pictorial vision, a vision that is continually refining the varied ways of articulating the constituent elements of the image, is characterized by a marked poetic, almost metaphysical atmosphere, which seems to be stealthily settling into the happy viewer’s consciousness.

The stages of this evolution can be easily recognized, from the minute description of nature, in cuttings and sequences, somehow close to the aesthetics of the so-called ‘Poiana – Marului School’, then turning into ‘gardens’ and ‘mysteries’ that interpret the motif in a very independent way, using lively, glowing colours and then reaching the present stage, focused on another cycle of gardens and half-abstract compositions, which however offer the viewer recognizable holding points, subtly rythmed works, of a very beautiful structuring _expression.

These stages – or better called stylistic landmarks, naturally correspond to the formative path covered by the artist , a path constituted of university art studies, visual experiences and travels, all highly important for a crucible where the structure of her coherently constituted personality was moulded, without distortions or breaks that could have endangered her strength and the authenticity of the creative approach.

If metaphorical definitions were to be used, her entire work could be placed under the sign of a journey aimed at finding her deep inner self. At the same time, from a geographical and even spiritual point of view,she travels from a certain northern distance of mysterious but accurate colors towards an  Arcadian, Eden-like Mediterranean with forms of relief and vegetation brought to life by the burning sun of the south.

In this manner she succeeds in recreating instinctively and with a remarkable intuition major innovative paths of art. That these shapes and colours, depicted in her work , also have a feature that places them near the Italian ‘transavant-garde’ is a fact that pertains to the elective and selective affinity, characteristic of every artist that has something to say in the maze of assumed or not assumed trends and models of contemporary civilization. In such a labyrinth of confluences, Luminita  Gliga follows her path firmly and without hesitation, constantly and obstinately returning towards nature, from which she takes the compositional directions and chromatic relations that her way of interpreting a multi-shaped reality.

We confidently expect her to pursue without any interruptions a path marked by the artistic success and solid artistic signs already achieved.

Gheorghe  VIDA