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Rita Ernst:
"Architecture is no more than a memory, like a shadow" |
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| Rita Ernst from Zurich is not merely connected with the Zurich Concretists by the place in which she has chosen to live: her grammar of geometrical forms also brings her close to the art of the celebrated group. |
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For the artist also works in a systematic and analytic manner when she devises her meticulous catalogues of forms, assays the potential of verticals, horizontals and diagonals in countless variations, or proceeds according to modular systems. But at the same time she can free herself from this rule-bound approach inasmuch as she selects her colours intuitively, according to her subjective mood and momentary perceptions, and thus brings rational principles into harmony with emotionality.
Since the 1990s the starting point for her paintings have been ground plans taken from architectural sites or churches, having already in fact sketched a church ground plan in her diaries ten years earlier. In an initial draft, the ground plan is transformed in to an abstract system of narrow vertical bars that is, however, already more or less emancipated from the original. This system is then transposed onto a canvas with a monochrome ground before assigning a second level of planar elements to the narrow bars - monochrome rectangles forming a second order that seems to float above that of the finely structured bars. The colour values that Rita Ernst chooses for this are largely symbolic. Thus the colour gold is reminiscent for instance of paintings or mosaics in sacred buildings, while bright blue evokes, for instance, the of the sea close to the place where she paints. These works likewise testify to the importance of rule-based composition in her oeuvre – and yet the systems disappear behind the sensuality of an imagery that appeals to the emotions.
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| Biography |
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1956
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born in Windisch [CH], lives and works in Zürich and on Sicily
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1972–76
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Studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Basel
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1979
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State grant for the applied arts
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1982
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Fellowship with studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
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1983
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Fellowship with guest studio from the City of Zürich, New York
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1991
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Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Prize, Zürich
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since 1997
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"Progetto Siciliano"
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