ANIA GONZALEZ
Although Ania’s father is a master of painting and sculpture who graduated from San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts, she is self-taught and by all accounts an untrained, outsider artist. She learned through observation how to produce art.
Her work has thick layers and extreme textures with gauze and material overlays and while she does paint other subjects, she repeatedly returns to a recurring theme; a young girl in a bathing suit or what we call “The Bathers”.
Some see a lightheartedness and a hearkening back to childhood. We find the subtle differences between each of them intriguing; the outline of the figure, the movement and thickness of the line and how it subtly affects the form of the body, some more attenuated, some more pudgy, each has their own personality and her deliberate color choices and combinations help create a separate identity for each one. How are their personalities affected by their body form?
"I like innocence, that's why I paint those uncommon girls. I want to reflect innocence, simplicity, and what a simple stroke is worth when is made in the human form and placed in several color concepts. Within a green meadow fully bloomed in a starry sky and other colors that evoke the different fantasies of the character herself. It's simply that. Innocence, childhood, delicacy, subtlety, and at the same time looking for my own personal artwork."
Her work has not been shown outside of Cuba.