Impresii critice despre artista <<Mariana Papară>>

Mariana Paparà was born in Bràila, in Romania, in 1955. 

With a degree in painting from the prestigious “Ion Andreescu” Academy of Art in Cluj Napoca,  she went on to obtain recognition as a professional artist through a further and demanding three year training course, required in her country for admission to the register of the Romanian Union of  Professional Artists. At the same time, she undertook the study of several specialized techniques,  both ancient and contemporary, such as By,zantine iconography, egg tempera, stained glass, and  painting on glass which she explored with unique “reverse scratching” effects. For over twenty  years she taught painting and drawing at the Piatra Neamt Art School, meanwhile, from 1978,  launching an intense exhibition activity that saw 

her participation as guest artist in international symposia, and shows at galleries and museums in the  Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy. 

When she moved to Turin in 2000, she founded the “Aripa” Gallery International Art Association  and School of Art, giving rise to events, intercultural exchanges and projects intended to interpret  the most diverse expressions of contemporary art. 

In addition to organizing international shows, she is particularly involved in teaching, with a special  focus on children. 

Her works are conserved in important collections, both public and private. 

She is a member of the Romanian Professional Artists’ Union and of the Unesco International  Association of Professional Artists. 

She expresses her poetic through thematic cycles, at the centre of which lies the concept of  metamorphosis as the individual’s inner potential to evolve. Her language develops from neo Expressionist roots and from her experiments with the monumental, which, however, come to  completely unique and personal results, leaving room for exploration of the interdisciplinary  alongside new and antique materials chosen conceptually as transmitters of memories and  symbologies. 

She lives in Piatra Neamt and Turin where she also runs a studio-gallery. 

The cathartic force of the energy that breaks over the material becomes the tangible mark of new  prospects for freedom from the bonds of pain and death. 

The universal message of the Turin shroud and its implications of hope and impetus towards the  redemptive power of knowledge, inspire the work of Mariana Paparà, a profoundly meditative artist  whose work is permeated by the concept of metamorphosis. She perceives in it the evolutionary 

potential of hope and cosmic harmony, where every living being is included, and which is open to  everyone who manages to shake and shatter his own veil: that symbolic blindfold from which it is  possible to emerge renewed. 

All her work, in fact, mixes the thematic allegory of the Shroud, and it develops along the lines of  an intimist\personal exploration that identifies in the transfiguration of the bodies wrapped in burial  sheets the elaboration of renewed life. 

The metaphorical resurrection, the individual and collective path towards an outlook of  comprehension, blurring the borders between material and thought, rationality and spirit, emerge  with urgency in her poetic, pervaded with a powerful upward thrust that transcends history and  narrative to spring free beyond time and place. 

Her powerfully communicative language, the fruit of long years of study and interdisciplinary  artistic experiences, finds expression in wood panels and installations, made with materials that do  not just serve form, but also have a conceptual aspect as conveyors of memories and symbologies. 

Antique woods, gauze, parchment, papyrus, nails, packing papers, glue, tempera, acrylics and oils,  thicken and clump into dense impastos formed by a gestural, “signic” script that paradoxically  dematerializes its weight, alleviates the gravity, and invite the soul to rise up. Elegant and refined,  Mariana Paparà’s vocabulary flows from an alert expressive capacity, where each sign, each trace,  takes form and becomes a visual image, following exactly the thought process that it aims to show.  Her long and rigorous academic studies, and her in-depth knowledge of ancient and experimental  contemporary. 

Silvana Nota, critic de arta