PROLOGUE BY FERNANDO PONCE (Historian and Art Critic)

Claudia Morera, an emerging artist in the panorama of the Plastic Arts in Spain, shows us a collection of some of her latest works.

Throughout her development as an artist she has gone through different stages reflecting her evolution with regard to her treatment of the canvas, technique, composition, chromatic distribution, subject matter, that is to say the physical and spiritual supports of the painting.

This current stage is decisive in that it gives an adequate answer to the challenges which the work of art gives to its creator from the very instant in which it is conceived.   It is a stage of solid formation in which some of the characteristics to be amplified later can already be seen.  In the case of Claudia Morera, this led to the development into a more personal way of painting at times seeking the fusion of the abstract and the figurative.  At other times showing only one of them. She acts freely in her own universe. The passage from one moment to another has not been easy for her, and nor has coexistence with opposites, or at least apparent opposites. In my opinion the one continuously makes demands on the other so that apart from the procedure or methods used, the true personality of the artist is displayed. In this sense, Claudia Morera has managed to merge the objective elements inherited from the history of painting and especially Italian painting where she was formed artistically, the inevitable apprenticeship, with the reality of her feelings and personal experiences.  We are talking about the radical sincerity of the work of a painter who bursts with force and coherence into the artistic life of this country and abroad. It is difficult to catalogue her painting. Perhaps by describing her way of resolving the formal questions, we might manage to grow closer to her mode of expression. She does not break the harmony of the painting, she configures it with rhythms and colours, mastering the gesture, the line. In the abstract she plays with antagonistic forms, the world of opposites which inhabit the universe. Her work is executed with care from the first impregnations of the cloth, almost handcrafted, as well as her attempts to obtain different textures. It is necessary to recognize volume and harmony, control of the subject and the drawing. And that secret and hidden geometry which welcomes sensations and tranquilizes anxiety. Her art is full of strength. History has devoured ferociously a number of aesthetic discussions in recent years.

We are faced with a form of painting which is simple and at the same time complicated.  Claudia Morera undertakes a process of synthesis between the intellectual and the sensitive; between the conscious and the unconscious. In this process she develops her art in order to give answers to her areas of anguish or emptiness, which she finds both externally and inside herself.

The two dimensions are mixed and spread out, one dominating the other. Her painting is expression and lyricism, working layer upon layer to the point that the whole creative process emerges from the depths of her work. The cloth, covered with various layers of paint, is raised on superimpositions. The contents and the messages pass through these layers the image which is interpreted, this orb of sensations, perceptions, feelings, which are selected and deposited during the development of the painting.

It is natural that in this artistic process the colour is decisive and essential.  The chromatism is undoubtedly intentional. The colour has direction, purpose; it is sufficient in itself to express the world of personal experiences which it has within.  And this is how Claudia Morera uses it.   Sensations of pain or joy, anxiety or acquiescence to the world are included in her canvasses through the use of colour, which orchestrate as if they are melodies. It is easy to detect a chromatic ritual directed to finding communication between the painter and the recipient of her work. The colour is the fan belt which seeks the others’ response. To cross this long-dreamed of frontier, which establishes reciprocal links of communication between people.  From her solitude, is she looking for the other’s solitude so that both disappear? In fact Claudia Morera maintains a dialogue with the painting trying to make this extensible to those who contemplate it. In her work we also find a sense of the aesthetic which is orientated by harmonic rhythms, although she often transforms them with measured impasting of colour. This harmony is full of vitality, exciting, only supported on a plastic basis. The gesture is born in the imagination of the artist. It transmits its spontaneity in order to enter into the slower and more developed sphere of the painting. It has to be like this in order to avoid excessive speed of execution. One should not renounce, as frequently occurs, one of the great privileges of art. The possibility of peaceful and meditated recreation of more or less rationalized manipulation. We have often fallen into the trap caused by creativity. Very marked in painting and especially in the different derivations of abstract expression. The gesture is strong and demanding, but it must be subject to the laws of subsequent elaboration, this repertory of techniques and procedures which are not definitive in themselves, but are essential to achieve a successful work of art.

The works of Claudia Morera are not improvised nor are they the product of chance. Rather they are the product of reflection. After having felt the temptation of the gesture, she captures it and later enriches and develops it. She feels the trembling of the message and subsequently recreates it, incorporating knowledge and techniques, tearing apart its contents, if necessary, subjecting it to the texture, the substance, the trembling of the paintbrush, the tonalities of colour. She concludes the work in solitude and with concentration, deciding beforehand the size, the materials and the possible results.