Calina Lefter - Biography
My art captures the atmosphere suspended between reality and dream, in an intimate and inner dimension that lives in our memory and expectation. It is not a flight from reality in the narrow sense, but the search for a place of peace and tranquillity in which we could lose and find ourselves and then look again at the many miracles that surround us.
- Calina lefter
Life
Originally from Moldova, Calina studied Fine Art at “N.Grigorescu” Art University - Bucharest 2002. After her graduation she became a member of the Romanian Artists’ Union.
In 2008 she settled in Milan and exhibited her work in various galleries and international events in Italy such as:
- “Expo Milano 2015” - Milan,
- “Affordable Art Fair 2013” - Milan,
- “After East” - Milan 2010 with Ion Grigorescu and other Romanian artists.
In 2016 she moved to the UK (Reading) and she became a member of “Reading Guild of Artists” in 2018.
Among the most important exhibitions:
- Public Art in The Plaza/Erftstadt Court - Wokingham 2022
- Sense of Space 2022 - South Hill Park Centre for the Arts
- Reading Charity art Fair 2021 - Leighton Park
- Wokingham Arts Trail - 2021 - Wokingham
- Cookham & Maidenhead Arts Trail 2021 - Maidenhead
- Henley Arts Trail 2021 - Henley on Thames
- Joint winner of Marie Dyson Award at Sir John Madejski Art Gallery, Reading Museum - 2019
- Reading Guild of Artists’ (RGA) 89th Annual Exhibition - Reading Museum 2019
- Henley Art Trail - 2019
- RGA Summer Show 2018 - Reading University
- The Whiteknights Studio Trail 2018 - Reading
- Parallax Art Fair 2017-2018 - London
- The Annual Salon of UK-based Romanian Artists 2017 - London
More about Calina Lefter: www.calinalefter.com www.instagram.com/calinalefter
Diana Seidl at Marie Dyson award
At the opening of the 89th RGA Annual Exhibition at the Reading Museum, Diana Seidl offered the MARIE DYSON Award to Calina Lefter
“There is real vibrancy and personality in the way the paint has been applied. The artist displays strong control of the compositional elements of the picture - making it work as a whole. Also a great use of colour and texture in the paint. The inclusion of the birds is crucial as it makes a centre of focus and a different tempo in the painting.”
- Diana Seidl - Reading Museum, 2019
Recensioni
Italian verison (original)
Calina Lefter parte dalla visione realistica del paesaggio per creare mondi irreali tessuti con minuzia e costruiti, attraverso l’inserimento di materiali eterogenei, come minuscoli gioielli. I paesaggi - ora astratti, ora volutamente fedeli alla verità della natura – appaiono come meditate fughe che riproducono, grazie alla morbidezza della stoffa e alla delicatezza dei materiali, visioni di mondi lontani, placidi rifugi in cui è impossibile percepire la ruvidezza della realtà.
English verision
Calina Lefter starts from a realistic vision of the landscape to create unreal worlds intricately woven and constructed through the incorporation of heterogeneous materials, like tiny jewels. The landscapes - sometimes abstract, sometimes intentionally true to nature - appear as contemplative escapes that reproduce, thanks to the softness of the fabric and the delicacy of the materials, visions of distant worlds, tranquil refuges where it is impossible to perceive the harshness of reality.
Daniela Ambrosio about - Calina Lefter
Alchimie tattili
Artist from the poetic and introspective vein, Calina Lefter takes inspiration from the real landscape view to create imaginary worlds of remarkable lyrical intensity, enriched by bright flashes and interesting polymateric contrasts.
Her favourite subjects are natural landscapes of great breath captured in special moments of the day and witnesses of the progressive change of seasons, or still life, in home-made interiors of metaphysical imprint, where time seems so dilated to appear almost absent.
Everything lies suspended between reality and dream, in an intimate and inner dimension that lives in memory and expectation. Observing her work carefully, she sees a material stratification, but also of slow, gradual, cured and methodical meaning, aimed at the ultimate achievement of a compositional harmony that can attract the spectator in a new and sensual context.It is difficult to resist the temptation to touch with the hand the tactile surfaces of her paintings: ripples of colour, dripping and a great variety of fabrics, now soft, now stiffer, now smooth and now perforated; these seem to wait for us to bring us back.
I remember the feelings already experienced before.\Dialogue between so many different materials is tight; a compositional game that reveals a lively and passionate experimentalism that leaves the free matter of expression through those properties that are their own. The artist seems to be orchestrating with tonal modulation mastery which, following each other, suggests a brilliant and well-calibrated rhythm made of long pauses and counterpoint. The large spots of colour, animated by innumerable colours, alternate with elements of their own specificity and careful detail, forcing the eye to follow an irregular path and to dwell on certain details and then, mentally, to rebuild their own; a vision that is not only the visual evidence suggested by the painter but a unique and personal vision.The titles of the works themselves, “Drops of Stars”, “Rain Today”, “Waiting for Dinner” and “Winter Night”, reveal this desire to stop a particular moment of your life, crystallize their moods and transpose on the canvas a feeling that can be captured and shared by others. They also reveal conflicting feelings: a delicate and enveloping melancholy, drained in the warm and bright vision of so many dear and beloved natural landscapes, where to refresh the mind tired of the afflictions of everyday life.
It is not a flight from reality in the narrow sense, but the search for a place of peace and tranquillity in which we lose and find again, and then look again with the many miracles that surround us.
- Emanuela Rindi - Castelli Gallery, Milano, 2012