KATRINA ALVAREZ - Germania
Contatti: info@katrin-alvarez.de
Dieser ganz besondere Moment (This very
Childhood is an unprotected space-2016
special moment) oil on canvas 86 x 86 x 6,5 cm
Oil on canvas objects- 120x100 cm
Horus-2015
Whistleblower-2013
Oil on canvas object-106 x126 cm
Oil on canvas-104 x 122 x 5 cm
Genesis-2015
The Power of Thought-2016
Oil on canvas objects-128 x 128 cm
Oil on canvas object- 105 x 125 x 10 cm
About her Art
Katrin Alvarez (birthplace Güstrow) is a qualified legal expert and editor. She has published several surrealistic satires and a novel.
Her paintings, which can be assigned to the fantastic realism, have already been exhibited in Israel, Canada, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland, the U.S. and China.
Important awards:
In 2007, she won the Allan Edwards Award from the Federation of Canadian Painters (SFCA) in Vancouver.
In 2011, one of her works was selected for the "Museum of Fantastic Art" at the Pálffy Palace in Vienna.
In 2011, she was awarded with the Vivid Arts Network Award "Onore alla creatività e l'eccellenza nelle arti".
In 2012, Alvarez received the Grande Médaille d'Or MCA Azur at Cannes and was awarded the Leonardo Prize (Painting) at the Chianciano International Art Award, 2012.
CURRICULUM
Soloshows (Selection):
2012 Palais Palffy, Vienna, Austria
2010 Palais Palffy, Vienna, Austria
Galleria Tondinelli, Rome, Italy
2004 „Die kleine Weltlaterne“, Berlin, Germany
1981 Galerie Kunst und Psyche, Cologne, Germany
1978 Galerie Kunst und Psyche, Cologne, Germany
1972 Galerie Glaub III, Cologne, Germany
Groupshows (Selection):
2013 Moya-Museum, Vienna, Austria
Luminarté Gallery, Dallas, USA
London Art Biennale, London, UK
"In The Mids"Art of Innovation, Florence, Italy
Gagliardi Gallery, London, UK
Chianciano Art Museum, Chianciano, Italy
2012 „M.C.A“ Cannes-Azur, Cannes, France
Moya-Museum, Vienna, Austria
Chianciano International Art Award 2012, Chianciano, Italy
International Competition of GemlucArt 2012, Monte Carlo, Monaco
"Imagine" at LuminArte Gallery, Dallas, USA
2011 Int. Art Exhibition (Nina Torres Fine Art at 1800 Gallery), Miami, USA
Artrom „Home“ Gallery, Rome, Italy
The Gallery in Redchurch Street, London, UK
La Galleria Pall Mall, London, UK
Atelier Z, Paris, France
Ico Gallery, New York, USA
Museum Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy
2010 Fucking Kunst, Galerie Friedrichshöhe, Berlin, Germany
George Segal Gallery, Montclair, USA
Southern Nevada Museum of Fine Art, Las Vegas, USA
Broadway Gallery, New York, USA
The work „Borderline“ was selected for the „Phantasten Museum“ in Vienna,
2009 Ico Gallery, New York, USA
Florence Biennale 2009, Florence, Italy
2008 Agora Gallery, New York, USA
2007 Painting on the Edge (Int. Competition), Vancouver, Canada.
2004 Agora Gallery, New York, USA
1978 Sara Kishon Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
1968 Jahresausstellung Kölner Künstler, Cologne, Germany
Fairs (Selection)
2013 BEIJING Art Expo 2013 (The gallery STEINER), Beijing, China
AAF Mailand (Curator Rosanna Cotugno), Milano, Italy
ART.FAIR (Artodrome Gallery), Cologne, Germany
2012 Art Innsbruck (Curator Dr. Allegretti), Innsbruck, Austria
2011 Red Dot Art Fair (Curator Despina Thunberg), Miami, USA
Artexpo New York, New York, USA
2009 HanseArt Bremen, Bremen, Germany
1978 Art Basel 78, Basel, Switzerland
Transitional areas by von Gerhard Habarta
The art of the moment, of the immediate, is dominated by a great tendency to verbosity. Every documenta and biennale is packed with speech bubbles so as to conceal the lack of pleasure in art. Not only pleasure, but fear, longings, memories, injuries and damage caused by co-existence with other humans, a co-existence that can be sublimated through art. None of that has any value in instant art. ‘Life’ is replaced by political tirades, in the same way that action and reaction to life is replaced by tirades in the political sphere.
These emotions in life are more deeply buried under layers of theoretical constructs than are Sigmund Freud’s ‘dirty little gods’ in the debris of civilisations. The painter and illustrator Katrin Alvarez is an excavator. She reveals to us the pieces in life’s puzzle. With apparently unconnected material she points up interconnections by creating the transitional areas of impulsivity and instability in interpersonal relationships, in moods and in self-image, as it is called in the literature of clinical psychology. Her picture in Vienna’s Phantastenmuseum collection is tellingly called ‘Borderline’.
The artist worked for a long time as a journalist, and so one might dismiss her works as reflections on a door-to-door inquiry. But that’s not what they are. They are universally valid comments on the transitional area between the outside world and the inner world.
Unlike other fantastic artists who seek their subjects in mythological legend or who see themselves as visionaries or healers creating their own natural religion in paint, Alvarez paints pictures of psychotraumatology. Traumatic experiences are a basic human experience. The mental effects of global and personal catastrophes have been expressed in the collective unconscious. The painful losses and mental disturbances resulting from these events have led to numerous attempts to mitigate the negative mental effects through intuitive methods. Modern psychotraumatology is reckoned to have begun with a lecture by Professor Sigmund Freud ‘On the etiology of hysteria’ (1896). In it, Freud deals with the connection between hysteria and sexual child abuse. Sigmund Freud never understood why the Surrealists hailed him as their prophet: had he known the paintings of Karin Alvarez, he would have understood it better. But the Surrealists themselves were largely to blame for the lack of understanding on the part of the psychiatrist they so revered, because of their emphasis on the unconscious and dreams. Alvarez works differently.
Here the damage to mental life is directly sublimated. Not as therapy but, as the artist herself puts it ‘as a journalist describing life, not with words but with colours and lines. The overwhelming beauty of existence as well as its gruesome dark side – I try to observe as many aspects as possible and recreate them in my visual language. The melding of new virtual dimensions with good old reality is a source of great fascination for me’ And this fascination is conveyed to her viewers, making them find new ways of reading pictures.
Prof.Georg Habarta
Transitional areas by Prof.Georg Habarta (Curator, publisher, founder of the New Fantastic Art Museum at Palais Palffy,Vienna)