Exhibition: Marilú Eustachio – Heimat 2

Opening: 10.12.19, 7pm
Exhibition: 11.12.19 – 18.1.20
Closed: 22.12.19 – 6.1.20

 

“Marilù Eustachio (born in Merano in 1934, living in Rome) associates the Vinschgau region with her feeling of home to this very day. In the past few years, she has got closer to this home in circa 70 folios. A selection from the series of the same name was shown at Kunst Meran/Merano Arte. In addition to the “Heimat” cycle, a selection of works from the past twenty years was also shown, a glimpse into Eustachio’s extensive creative oeuvre.” That is what the curator of the exhibition and artistic director of Kunst Meran wrote in her invitation to the exhibition. Having followed the work of Marilù Eustachio for years, accompanying her artistic development as long as I managed the Galerie Spatia in Bolzano, I was very grateful to Kunst Meran and Ms. Rekade that Merano honoured an artist born in Merano. A merited—and overdue—homage to her birthplace. In 2016, for her 80th birthday as it were, the Museion presented in its Study Collection a selection of her “Taccuini” curated by Andreas Hapkemeyer. Now, a photo exhibition in the Fotoforum gallery concludes the “Home” cycle with a selection of photographs, all of which are dedicated to South Tyrol.

Marilù Eustachio is a unique personality. She comes from Rome. She speaks Roman and thinks Roman, she moves in a Roman circle of friends and ambiance, but, idiosyncratically enough, she feels like a Tyrolean Roman. Not just because she was born in Merano: she spent years of her childhood in the Vinschgau region, her mother came from Malls, and until quite recently she came every year to South Tyrol, to Ums bei Völs. And her enthusiasm for South Tyrol was such that she persuaded numerous Roman artists and intellectuals to take their holidays in South Tyrol, “la terra piú bella”. That’s why there’s nothing kitschy or even patriotic about the title “Heimat” of the exhibition and now the photo series “Heimat 2”. No, for Eustachio, home is a matter close to her heart, a heartfelt connection, a matter of feeling.

And South Tyrol’s landscapes have also inspired countless works by the artist; she has undoubtedly produced thousands of drawings and photographs which all make up part of the “Tirolo” portfolio. Her photographic works are less well-known, though for many years she was always out and about with both sketchbook and camera, with which she captured impressions, details of houses, landscapes, cemeteries, as well as people. Many of her photographic works are still lifes. Random objects, arranged as still lifes. They are mountains, trees, flowers and landscapes that gradually emerge from indefinite signs that are strung together and break each other apart. Just as forms grow in her drawings with minimal graphics, her photographic works show the physicality of the object and the structures of the landscape in its visible immateriality. Eustachio shrouds her landscapes in an atmospheric haze, thus releasing the object from the properties of weight and density. Capturing the atmospheric mood and rendering the subjective impression constitute the stylistic characteristics of her work.

With the—more or less—dense “atmospheric” haze in which she shrouds her landscapes, the artist pursues the soul of the subject, a poetic transformation. In this way, landscapes arise with Arcadian impressions. She succeeds in freezing moments where the incidental consolidates to a balanced composition: romantic, symbolic, lyrical, pictorial.
(Arnold Tribus)

“For me, my first sensory and cognitive experiences are linked with South Tyrol: harmonious murmuring of little streams, the fierce roaring of torrents, wind in trees, rain on shingle roofs, the smell of manure in the gardens, the smell of freshly mown grass, of resin and of wood,” the artist writes about herself.