"Inspiration and Tradition". Exhibition of works by Nicoleta Stati

The Russian Academy of Arts presents an exhibition of the Moldovan artist Nicoleta Stati. The "Inspiration and Traditions" exposition is a very personal, protected from everything external, exclusively picturesque search for traditions as a phenomenon of life and art.

The cultural and professional background of Nicoleta Stati, of course, was formed in the environment of the Moldovan pictorial academic school. Nevertheless, her painting carries with it a critical transformation of the prevailing ideas. Therefore, along with “traditions” in the title of the exhibition, “inspiration” appears as a basic reaction of creative activity and an act of personal liberation.

The formation of the author’s painting language was influenced, first of all, by the classics of Moldovan painting of the twentieth century: Moses Gamburd, who reinterpreted the impressionistic approach to nature in his late "quiet art", combining the impulse of impression with the coloristic density of symbolism; Igor Viera, who managed, through the aesthetics of primitivism, to reveal in painting and book illustration all the complexity and heterogeneity of Moldovan folk culture and folklore; Mikhail Grecu, who abandoned the socialist realist conjuncture and became, as a result, an iconic independent figure of the late Soviet visual arts of Moldova.

With some degree of convention, the exhibition "Inspiration and Traditions" can be called "Expressionism" in the process of its own pictorial manifestation. Inheriting and creatively transforming the pasty and always unique impasto technique, Nicoleta Stati shows that the artist’s vision is not grasping a composition in static space from a certain point, but framing everything he sees with an optical structure. What is the specificity of this order? The resulting relief of the painted surface, consisting of line, brushstroke and color, reveals vision as an ecological phenomenon that depends not only on the eyes and the brain, but also on the environment, body movement and the available conditions for obtaining information. Stati makes this discovery, first of all, in the open air, showing that a habitual foray into nature can become a real experiment in the open air.It is a sensitive observation that leads the artist to the realization that nature itself provides opportunities for active action and the use of its potential.

An attempt to transfer natural perception into the space of painting is, of course, problematic, since between immediate, direct vision and the formation of an image there is a border of already mediated perception and skill. “Technique speaks of the logic and professionalism of the artist,” notes Nicoleta Stati, while the miracle of the manifested life is “perhaps what drives us!”. The viewer is thus exposed to a complex, non-linear drama and inner tension between inspiration and tradition.

The text was prepared on the basis of an article by art critic Alexander Salenkov.

Nicoleta Stati is an artist with a wide and varied educational experience. She studied in Moldova, Switzerland and Italy. Since 2014, she has been studying for a doctorate in management. The author is the founder of the Stati Art Foundation and the private academy of the same name, which implemented a bachelor’s program in easel painting in 2015-2019 in Chisinau. Nicoleta Stati’s pedagogical activity began in her native school - the Academic Lyceum of Fine Arts "Igor Vieru", which she headed from 2011-2019. Since 2015, she has also headed the Voice of Art Foundation, which supports young Moldovan artists. The coverage of so many areas of professional activity in various fields of art testifies to the active position of the artist,striving for the systematic development of art education and the preservation of the traditions of easel painting in Moldova.