The blues, reds, golds, and browns in Morales’s diptych, Dittico M85-9-1, Dafne, (1985), which is painted in bold, thick brick-like brushstrokes elicit other art historical associations. The diptych’s sub-title, Dafne, refers to the story of the Greek nymph, who, unwilling to be seduced by Apollo, asks for help and is transformed into a laurel tree. Morales’s colour palette resonates with the emotional content of this story—one she encountered through painting the work whilst listening to the Strauss opera of the same name—with the final jarring red strokes that complete the painting’s composition seeming to point to the raw emotion of Dafne’s experience.
Morales adopted a technique in these works of layering, with a standardised brush, single broad thick brushstrokes—one on top of the other. Captured within the slight arcs and arrangement of these brushstrokes is the movement of Morales’s body, as she stretches high, stoops low, or even stepped up onto a ladder to reach each part of the painting. Such a procedure makes explicit the relationship between the artist’s presence, and the size and format of the chosen ‘space’ for painting. As such Morales’s brushstrokes can be seen as a development of the previous methodologies which she had used when laying down her paint. In earlier paintings such as Dittico R71-12-13 (1971) she conceptualized and employed a constant non-hierarchical and multi-directional manner of painting—with the paint being applied all at once, and in all directions. Whereas in later works this rationale changed, and after 1972 she used a free, open and loose diagonal gesture whilst painting, that the artist likened to that “of cleaning a window”.
In the diptych Dafne, both the artist’s colour palette and her distinctive use of brushstrokes connect to aspects of European culture. Morales sees her stroke’s form as deriving from a very Mediterranean understanding of painting, learnt through the facetted brushstrokes of Cezanne. Indeed, even the emptiness of her diptychs’s right-hand panels seems to connect with a similar quality employed by Cezanne and Matisse, where parts of their canvases may sometimes be left untouched. This emptiness is at times manifest in southern sunlight that obscures what is visible, and at other times, it seems to revel in a horror vacui that deprives the painting of ever becoming a finished statement.
1
Carmengloria Morales: Rome, London, Milan, New York, Sermugnano, 2024, installation view at the BSR
2
Diptych M85-9-1, Daphne, 1985 (110 x 2) x 220 cm, metal pigments, acrylic on canvas and empty canvas
