Born in Federal Germany and “naturalized” Sicilian, Eva Warnke is at present exhibiting in New York, in the famous Soho area, at the Alena Adlung Gallery.
Sicily is, as everybody knows, the birthplace of illustrious contemporary artists as Guttuso, Caruso, Fiume, Migneco, and many others, but they have materialized and fulfilled themselves as artists far from home, in environments which were considered more consonant with them.
Instead I want to deal, here, with an artist who followed the opposite course, that’s to say, she came from far away in our island and here she has matured and fulfilled herself.
I’m talking about the German artist Eva Warnke who, having moved in Sicily, perhaps not for an artistic but for a familiar choice - she married a fellow-citizen of ours - found here those colours, that environment, that expressive force which are typical of this land, which have so much influenced her as to let her be considered an artistic daughter of Sicily.
Eva Warnke mounted her first Italian personal exhibition right in Palermo and there is nobody who wasn’t struck by her sense of realism and colour.
In fact she is an artist who consistently pursues the realistic style, in the pure sense of the word, according to the traditional canons of art, that is, to be clear, the Aristotelian “Ars imitatur Naturam”, that is the Kantian “Art is beautiful when it has the appearance of Nature”. Besides, it seems to be doubtless that this is the way to the real art, with the abandon, now, of those deviant or even aberrant forms, that, unfortunately, someone still persist in pursuing or exalting. And then, as a real artist must have and has always had, Eva Warnke has a remarkable aesthetic taste, expressed in her care of her personal appearance, in the search for refined and elegant clothes, in her taste for good music, most of all the classical one (she has been a violinist herself), and she has been quite properly defined a Mistress in “trompe-l’oeil”, as well as a complete artist.
Essentially, Eva Warnke’s paintings “saturate” the soul of those who admire them: for them, I like this term which sounds more complete than the mere “move”, which looks like a momentary and impetuous mood, while works of art have to fill the soul with satisfaction, and to be continuously, even if not immediately, pleasant, and to be enjoyed in their whole as well as in every detail or corner.
However, how did Eva land in Palermo?
“Years ago, in Germany, a dear person told me “Eva, I can’t see you here, but in a Mediterranean country, with bright colours, the sun shining, and the sea”. I laughed at it, because at that time the idea to abandon my land had never crossed my mind. During my frequent travels as a tourist in Sicily, I began to love this country, its sun, its light, its people and, at last, I married a Sicilian and moved here”.
Which connection is there among your beauty, your being a stranger an the success you win?
“Nationality or physical appearance certainly don’t affect an artist’s work; if then they affect the outer world, and I don’t know it, if by one hand it can be pleasant because of that sense of womanly vanity, by the other it could annoy, because you feel regarded as a side issue your professionalism, about which the artist chiefly cares.
In America Oggi, January 3rd, 1989
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