Diana Alieva and her light structures
Solemn red and delicate blue, flowers, fish and birds, old cities – Diana Aliyeva’s paintings enchant at first sight. They seem to emanate light, their surface feels soft and caressing like a precious carpet…
Can artists from Azerbaijan be distinguished from artists from other cultures? It seems so. By some special vitality, by the joy of perceiving the world, by the love of color, and the ability to work with it.
Paintings by Diana Alieva take a worthy place in this collection. It is filled with a strong, juicy charge of Azerbaijani culture: the Apsheron sun, a salty sea breeze, and the sweet aroma of gardens. How does the artist create this mood, and which images form her individual symbolic system?
The combination of warm and cold shades creates a signature coloring and the viewer feels the midday warmth of stones and the subtle freshness of water. The thick layer of paint on the surface of the paintings gives them a special materiality and fullness of vitality.
Azerbaijan in Diana’s paintings appears in images that are both concrete and generalized, and history is intertwined with modernity. Here is a rushing bull as if it is the embodiment of an ancient deity. Here are pomegranates bursting with sweet juice – and what better symbol can tell us about the fertile land of Azerbaijan? Here is an organ grinder in the street of the old city, and we hear the crackling melody echoing off the rough ochre walls…
Working with figurative and abstract motifs, imaginatively and masterfully creating color harmony, Diana Alieva invites us to feel and love with all our might, to be happy here and now, in this land, in this sunshine.
