Crespi, A 2019, Barbara Nahmad. Oltremare, Federico Rui Arte contemporanea, Milan | 2021, enhanced rE-print, EdiXion, Milan.
The sea as territory of the beyond. Barbara Nahmad (Milan, 1967) has always used painting as a language of challenge and research, traversing themes that range from the intimacy of bodies to social visions. This new series of paintings dedicated to the Baltic Sea marks a turn towards contemplation: the sea becomes a mental space where to seek a new horizon, between desire and omen, between our finite nature and the landscape of the infinite.
A path of artistic evolution. Due to her Jewish roots, Barbara Nahmad is an artist anchored to Mediterranean culture, but has always demonstrated that she does not intend her origins as a predestination. Her artistic path has developed through distinct phases: the audacity of nudes, the erotic exploration of the All’ultimo respiro (To the last breath) series, the scenes of urban and social conflict, up to the visions of hope of the Eden series, dedicated to the dream of a possible world. Then came the sea. Not the Mediterranean of her roots, whose appearance would have been almost predictable, but the Baltic: a conscious choice of distancing that represents a true search for other meaning. This Northern European sea, cold and distant from her culture of origin, becomes the perfect territory for exploring the unknown.
A conquered maturity. In these paintings, Barbara Nahmad scrutinises the sea in search of a new horizon, but does so with an approach that marks a profound evolutionary turning point. The line that separates earth from sky becomes the thread stretched between desire and omen, between our everyday and the landscape of the beyond. What emerges is a new time of painting: more introspective, silent, free from the need to assert itself through provocation. With the sweetness of a maturity conquered through decades of research, this artistic phase represents the passage from an art that had to demonstrate to an art that can finally contemplate, in harmony with the historical moment we are experiencing. As their title suggests, Oltremare, these works are the synthesis of an evolution that has brought the artist from youthful provocations to mature contemplation. They are not only the image of a physical space, but the representation of a mental space conquered through years of exploration.
Enhanced content of the book. Explore the multimedia materials embedded:
– p. 2: Marina Pizziolo introduces the artist
– p. 4: On the shores of the Baltic
– p. 12: Shirat HaYam (Song of the Sea)
– p. 53: The sea on the street in Milan
