Jump to content

Janika Fabrikant: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
Commenting on Wikipedia:Articles for creation submission (AFCH)
Line 24: Line 24:
== Career ==
== Career ==


[[File:Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. 1992.png|thumb|left|Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. Acrylic on canvas. 90x130cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler.]] When she was 6 years old, the storm clouds of the impending war gathered over France. The child’s secure life was interrupted by an atmosphere of fear and foreboding. The discrepancy between an orderly reality and underlying terror would later become the essence of her art.
[[File:Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. 1992.png|thumb|left|Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. Acrylic on canvas. 90x130cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler.]]
Janika Fabrikant was born in Paris in 1943, as the thirds child of Israel and Blima Wolkowicz. Presently living in Zurich, she is a prominent French-Swiss painter of the industrial landscape, noted for its specific characteristic of cognitive dissonace.
After the war she completed school, worked to earn money, and enrolled at the [[Académie_de_la_Grande_Chaumière|Académie de la Grande Chaumière]], where she studied painting from 1953-1955. She had to break off her studies because she contracted tuberculosis. In 1957 she married Sigmund Fabrikant and had two sons, Rémy and Olivier. They moved to Sigmund’s home town Zurich in Switzerland, where their youngest child, Sara was born. In Zurich, absorbed in full-time domesticity, her irrepressible yearning for artistic expression grew. When her oldest son had completed his studies, she enrolled for a part-time course at the, now [[Zurich_University_of_the_Arts|Zurich University of the Arts]] ([http://www.zhdk.ch/?id=962 ZHdK]) which she attended from 1983-1985.


Career
[[File:Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009..png|thumb|right|Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009. Acrylic on Canvas. 140x100cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler]] Her further artistic development was inspired by visits to the U.S.A. where she experienced a closer affinity with the contemporary art movements than with the European avant garde. She was strongly attracted to the work of the American realist [[Edward Hopper|Edward Hopper]] and his rendering of the anonymity of American city life, with its dreary motels, cheerless filling stations and gloomy eateries. During a visit to New York in 1982 Fabrikant had occasion to view the retrospective exhibition of the painter [[Milton_Avery|Milton Avery (1885-1965)]] at the Whitney Museum of American art (see <ref>Haskell, Barbara. Milton Avery. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art. Harper & Row, 1982.</ref>). This experience brought her first break-through. She was inspired by Avery’s flat, interlocking shapes of homogenous colour, the simplification of form and the equal treatment of space and subject matter. But more importantly: Fabrikant was moved by Avery’s abstraction of a mood through colour. This was how she wanted to paint! But she still wrestled with colour, which at a certain stage she eliminated completely. In her urge to discard sentiment, she resorted to the exclusive use of black and white. She struggled on until at last she found the theme that echoed her latent yearning for expression during a further visit to the USA in 1985. There she saw the workings of a recycling plant in Detroit with its machines, trucks, mountains of refuse and polluted puddles. This experience brought about her second break-through and at this point she had found her motif, namely the industrial landscape. Now her colour assumed the synthetic quality that became her hallmark.
During her experiences in World War II the essence of her future art, namely discrepancy between visual reality and terror, was coined From 1953-1955 she studied painting at the [[Académie_de_la_Grande_Chaumière|Académie de la Grande Chaumière]]. In 1957 she moved Zurich, where she enrolled for a course at the present [[Zurich_University_of_the_Arts|Zurich University of the Arts]] ([http://www.zhdk.ch/?id=962 ZHdK]) which she attended from 1982-1985.

[[File:Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009..png|thumb|right|Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009. Acrylic on Canvas. 140x100cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler]] Her early artistic development was inspired by visits to the U.S.A. where she experienced a closer affinity with the contemporary art movements to that of the Parisian avant garde, in which she had grown up. She was influence by [[Edward Hopper|Edward Hopper]] and Milton Avery. [[Milton_Avery|Milton Avery (1885-1965)]] (see <ref>Haskell, Barbara. Milton Avery. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art. Harper & Row, 1982.</ref>). During a visit to a recycling plant in Detroit Fabrikant discovered the industrial landscape as her motif. Its rendering in synthetic colours became the hallmark of her art.


== Style ==
== Style ==

Revision as of 09:04, 12 July 2014

  • Comment: The article must meet one of these criteria:
    Template:Tq is only for quoting in talk and project pages. Do not use it in actual articles. StarryGrandma (talk) 20:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)


Janika Fabrikant
Janika Fabrikant, 2011. Photo: Yvonne Bohler
Born (1934-02-05) February 5, 1934 (age 90)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench/Swiss
WebsiteGalerie Alex Schlesinger

Janika Fabrikant, a French-Swiss painter of urban and industrial landscapes, was born in Paris, France, in 1934.

Career

File:Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. 1992.png
Janika Fabrikant. Chemineés d’usine. Acrylic on canvas. 90x130cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler.

Janika Fabrikant was born in Paris in 1943, as the thirds child of Israel and Blima Wolkowicz. Presently living in Zurich, she is a prominent French-Swiss painter of the industrial landscape, noted for its specific characteristic of cognitive dissonace.

Career During her experiences in World War II the essence of her future art, namely discrepancy between visual reality and terror, was coined From 1953-1955 she studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1957 she moved Zurich, where she enrolled for a course at the present Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) which she attended from 1982-1985.

File:Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009..png
Janika Fabrikant. Cern 3. 2009. Acrylic on Canvas. 140x100cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler

Her early artistic development was inspired by visits to the U.S.A. where she experienced a closer affinity with the contemporary art movements to that of the Parisian avant garde, in which she had grown up. She was influence by Edward Hopper and Milton Avery. Milton Avery (1885-1965) (see [1]). During a visit to a recycling plant in Detroit Fabrikant discovered the industrial landscape as her motif. Its rendering in synthetic colours became the hallmark of her art.

Style

Janika Fabrikant’s style defies categorization. The concepts “Visionary Precisionism”[2] and “Expressive Objectivity”[3], were attempted at some stage and then again discarded. Urban landscapes with their battered barrels, monstrous cranes, monumental machines, electricity plants, street façades reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico, outlined by shadows of invisible electrical cables, towers, bridges and canals became her subjects. Her paintings are rendered on a large scale. In subject they are akin to American Precisionism. Yet the powerful element of irony, of paradox and the monumentalization of the banal, links Fabrikant more closely to Pop Art and the visual world of Sci-fi films.

File:Janika Fabrikant. Peenebrücke. Wolgast. 2013..png
Janika Fabrikant. Peenebrücke. Wolgast. 2013. Acrylic on Canvas. 50x70cm. Photo: Yvonne Bohler

Her colours which change with every painting, are a fusion of aesthetic harmony and subtle cynicism, of beauty and a delicate malignancy. Her images have an immediate, mesmerizing effect, mainly due to their large size . But the premise of her vision remains her genuine fascination with the subject. This she captures with a camera. The photograph then forms the basis of her composition which she sketches directly onto the canvas. Then she reconstructs it in its three-dimensionality, with a painstaking rendering of light and shadow. After thus conceiving her subject in its rounded completeness, she covers it with a single layer of paint. This layer will assume the dominant mood of the painting, which exudes its special, simulated feeling, removed from nature. Her combination of motif and colour has an effect of tension, impenetrability, instability and a nameless distress. After a first impression of compositional harmony the viewer is drawn into a mysterious sense of dread, of a toxicity between subject and environment, of a cognitive dissonance.

From 1987 up to the present Janika Fabrikant participated in numerous group exhibitions in Switzerland, France, the U.S.A., and one in China. She has had 12 solo exhibitions, mainly in Paris and Zurich during which she sold much of her work to private collectors. Since 2012 she is represented by the Galerie Alex Schlesinger in Zurich.[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Haskell, Barbara. Milton Avery. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art. Harper & Row, 1982.
  2. ^ Solo Exhibition at the Galery “Zum grauen Wind” Zurich, 1995.
  3. ^ Affentranger-Kirchrat, Angelika. Expressive Sachlichkeit. Janika Fabrikant bei Pérez Rojas. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 23. 4. 2007.
  4. ^ Tödistrasse 48, Zurich, Switzerland. Phone: +41 43 233 92 93.

References

  • ANGELI, Bruno. Zwischen Pinsel und Pedalen. Velojournal 3, Zurich, 2011: 61.
  • ANONYMOUS under “Diese Woche”. Unbestechliche Wahrnehmung. Tachles, Zurich, 27. 4. 2007.
  • BEN YOSEF, Ute. Menschlich fabrizierte Maschinenlandschaften. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 21. 11. 1991.
  • BEN YOSEF, Ute. Janika Fabrikant stellt in Paris aus. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 17. 9. 1992.
  • BERG, Vivianne. Fabriken in Farben, die sich beissen. I. Wochenblatt 48, Zurich, 1.12. 1995.
  • ROSENBERG, Gabi. Schönheit als Sinnbild des Bösen. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 4.1. 1996.