ABOUT EVELINE LUPPI

Years of exploration with paint have led Eveline Luppi’s journey to create work that is technically challenging and visually inspiring to the viewer. Her work draws from the tradition of the Russian Constructivist Movement and Dutch Neoplasticism; her vocabulary is based on geometric techniques, where memory and experience are rendered as deeply structured space, full of passionate transitions and juxtapositions. The use of color is central to her work, evoking emotional states and bringing the viewer to a unified perception of the symbolic content.

Luppi was strongly influenced by the Dutch painter Mondrian: she was drawn to his painting Broadway Boogie Woogie with its rhythmic movements, colorful geometric forms, and overall structure. Its great title—referencing a lively dance on an energetic street in the center of Manhattan.
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The artist’s dynamic is all about structure and form. It relates to architecture and design, drawing from history and from elements of today's multi-media world. Luppi employs the methodology of constructivism, utilizing both hard-edged and soft-edged line-work—sometimes alone, sometimes in tandem—to create works that readily relate to each other while awakening different sensitivities in the viewer. Her work is inspired by universal experiences: childhood, as evident in her colorful structural Treehouse paintings; the deep emotional spirit and psyche explored in the stark black and white Construction/Structure series; the meditative, reflective state evoked by the patterns and rhythms of her monochromatic White Sands Revisited.
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Eveline Luppi’s work is both highly emotional and emblematic of the complexities of contemporary life. She is committed to self-discovery and makes her personal narrative accessible to the viewer.

Bob Dilworth, Professor Emeritus Department of Art and Art History, University of Rhode Island, who juried the show at the Bristol Art Museum had this to say about “EV POWER”;

“The work you submitted to the Bristol Art Museum was particularly stunning, different, unpredictable, forward thinking.”

Artist’s Statement;

The Power of Pattern

My Geometric Journey from a small American Textile Town.

Over the years, I've steadily grown more interested in the idea of "art as pattern." This is deeply rooted in my childhood experience.

As an adult, I went through the usual training in technical execution at various schools, including several years at the Art Students League, where my friends and mentors were Knox Martin, a nationally known artist, and William Scharf, who was Rothko's friend and assistant. I was deeply immersed in figurative and abstract expression styles. Over the years, I've moved from this to more geometric styles.

Two artists that have led me in this direction are EL Lissitzky and Mondrian. I've meditated on EL Lissitzky's “PROUN” and “PROUN 1C” paintings, for decades now. The latter, for example, deeply influenced my “White Sands” series. In the end, I internalized these paintings, as a reaction against an insistence on figurative painting only. “Figurative” is great, but art goes deeper than figures. His paintings go deeply into this territory.

It led me to an interest in nineteenth-century American quilts, and in Islamic art, where, because of religious doctrine, patterns reign supreme, in the lovely art of the Alhambra and calligraphy. Calligraphy is also an art in China, where landscape paintings are often expressed in highly stylized patterns.

Perhaps my biggest influence, however, is Mondrian. He originally modeled his patterned geometry on tree branches. Eventually in his later work, the tree pattern was replaced by the grid pattern itself in his canvases, leading to series like Broadway Boogie Woogie. In digital online photos, this looks idealized, but when you examine his work in museums, you see a lovely texture to the hand-painted geometric lines.

My training, my love of EL Lissitzky and Mondrian, led me eventually into a deeply patterned geometric style. As I mentioned above, this goes back to my childhood. When I was little, my mother would take me to textile factory back rooms. In those days, the Rhode Island textile mills were humming along. After I lost my father at the age of 8, my mother sorted out a thriftier lifestyle and began sewing clothes for the family.

In the showrooms I often strayed off on my own, browsing the many colorful fabrics and notions; keenly observing, color, pattern, and design. I would page through the pattern books of McCall, Butterick and Vogue. Later, I would sew a colorful coordinated wardrobe for college.

Perhaps it was predictable that my painting endeavors would surface my early childhood fascination with pattern, color and design. As my painting voice developed, this early passion became very evident in my work. It felt natural and fluid to be thinking in patterns.

My canvas has always been my worksheet. I am passionately devoted to moving color throughout the canvas. This is apparent in my early works like Red Cardinal (a huge red cardinal head in a blue garden full of white flowers), or later, in my geometric Treehouse series. Nowadays, my palettes change from series to series, where color is graduated from light to dark and mixed in intricate intersection. The work is mostly in series that are content-driven around core concepts.

Patterns that become visible on the canvas are deeply linked to my experiences in the world. They include universal themes that have evolved from childhood memories, city life and travel and nature. And from the many homes I have had away from home.

I thank the back-room clerk for the friendly assistance lifting fabric bolts open for me to always get the best look. At the age of 8 I began my journey of pattern building.

Eveline Luppi, 2022