Truth and freedom in Maria Bonomi's printmaking
As part of the 32nd Biennial of Graphic Arts, the Jakopič Gallery is exhibiting a retrospective exhibition of the internationally renowned artist Maria Bonomi, titled "Printmaking Forever". "The Brazilian artist and activist is a long-term supporter of the biennial and a strident champion of printmaking as a radical, democratic form of art," writes Maggie Gray is her review for the Apollo Magazine.
She first visited the biennial in 1967 and then, as she told for the Osmi dan TV show, grew up with it. About the works exhibited at the Jakopič Gallery, Maria Bonomi explains that "together, these works present researching, searching and different moments of my life. They were done in the period during and after the dictatorship in Brazil. These works represent a long story, which is also a personal one. There are without any figures, which are always replaced with metaphors because they have to circulate - printing is made for communication, truth and discussion." (Interview for the Likovni odmevi show).
Maria Bonomi is mostly active in the fields of printmaking and sculpture, but also does installation art, murals, production design... "My designs are also interesting at rock concerts, where we make prints for projections. Graphic prints are not repetitive drawings or photographs, they are a pure vibration of the relationship between etching, hand traces, and the material’s resistance. There is a certain level of libido and a true act of love," she confided in her Dnevnik Newspaper interview. Vesna Teržan wrote in her Mladina piece about the works of "the lady of gesture and action". She emphasised that "artworks that articulate Maria Bonomi’s high intelligence and sensibility also present her as a strong and socially committed artist."