ÍMPETU Nr. 5 dead and only dead

DIALOGART

a conversation with Lita Cabellut

Lita Cabellut (1961, Spain) is a wide-field artist living and working in the Netherlands. Her condition as an artist in her fullness, with a torrential force and an extraordinary capacity for work, makes her artistic activity develop in multiple disciplines. She not only touches painting, but the linguistic variables that reach all genres, from sculpture to photography, from installation to video or performance, without excluding operatic scenography, illustration, and graphic work. Without eluding her poetry

Cabellut is recognized as the third most quoted Spanish artist and her works have been exhibited in many museums around the world including: Seoul Art Center, Korea; Contemporary Art Museum, Sicily, Italy; CSMVS, Mumbai, India. Her work is included in the permanent collections of various museums such as the Goya IberCaja Museum, Zaragoza, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sicily, Italy; The Fendi Collection, Italy; Museu Europeu d’Art Modern, Vila Casas Foundation, Spain; Théâtre Mogador, France; Copelouzos, Greece; The Joop & Janine van de Ende Foundation, The Paul van Rensch Foundation, The Netherlands.

Lita Cabellut grew up in Barcelona and was adopted at the age of twelve by a Catalan family who gave her access to the knowledge of Spanish masters at the Prado Museum, after which she immediately dedicated her passion to art. She moved to Holland at the age of 19, where she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Over the years, Cabellut has developed a unique technique characterized by large-scale canvases that combine traditional techniques of frescoes and modern applications of paint. The human being and the social message, central themes in Lita Cabellut's work are expressed mainly through her large-format portraits.

Lita Cabellut Artist of the year 2021 Lita Cabellut has been chosen "Artist of the year 2021" in the Netherlands among eight finalists. The Artist of the Year choice is the oldest and by far the largest election in the art field in the Netherlands. Due to the staggered configuration with four electoral rounds, in which both a large panel of experts and the public cast their votes during the election period, the result shows the extent to which Dutch art and artists are widely appreciated. This year thousands of votes were cast again.

Barbara Nanning finished second, followed by Claudy Jongstra and Theo Jansen. Zoro Feigl, Iris van Herpen, Michael Raedecker, and Arno Kramer came in from fifth to eighth respectively. These eight artists also top the "Gallery of Contemporary Artists", the annual list of the hundred most appreciated Dutch visual artists.

IMPETU: What is your inspiration for shaping a peak human experience such as death through painting?

LITA: Life and death go together; I perceive life with the aspect that life and death are soul mates. They are inseparable. The first breath of the human being is already a path to death. I materialize with the same vitality and with the same intensity of feeling as I celebrate life. Death has always been very present, reminding me of the crucial moments in my life.

IMPETU: Death and testimony. What do they mean to you? LITA: Testimony is an illusion of the moment; death is a reality of the human being. The testimony is capricious because the memories are not reliable, the memory of the experiences is whimsical in what remains of them. But death is faithful, death walks with you. Death is a faithful companion; it does not leave you in any corner of existence. And the testimony is like a written word on the beach, history can simply erase it with a small wave.

IMPETU: At what point does art appear in your life?

LITA: On several occasions when I was very young, I was caught by images like the reflection of a rainbow in a puddle with oil on the street. I have memories of going through a facade and being completely hypnotized by the color with which they had painted it, ocher, blue and green ... and to my soul, I sensed that my eyes were going to have many visual landscapes and magical nuances.

IMPETU: What internal force takes hold of you every time you are faced with a blank canvas? What are you thinking about?

LITA: Life and death. My soul is willing to die, to give everything to reach that essence that I want to touch and feel and my intellect always rescues me with the nails of life. That force is a dance, it is a balance between reason and delirium.

IMPETU: What emotion does the work of Federico García Lorca transmit to you?

LITA: The power of integration. It is a sensation that I could hardly describe because it contains so much power! The concrete and the abstract, the geometric and the arrhythmic, how can I explain it to you? The word power of Federico, from Lorca, invokes me that it is everywhere, in a stone, in a river, in a grain of sand, in a tree, in a bird's song, in the cry of a murdered person, it is everywhere. In all elements at the same time, for me, it is mud and air.

IMPETU: How do you approach each new project? What inspires you?

LITA: The illusion, the need to communicate, the hunger to delve into the subject, the projects are simply an excuse to feel alive.

IMPETU: What is the language of colors for Lita Cabellut?

LITA: My first vocabulary, the one that allowed me to talk to you. Colors are part of my muscle and the substance of my blood.

IMPETU: What do you find in the photorealistic portrait that you cannot find in another pictorial genre? Is it a search for the living in art? Or of death?

LITA: I would not place my work as a photorealist portrait, I am precisely very far from what we call realism, my intention is to get closer to reality. My obsession is to reach the eye with that where things are not in their place and change perspective at the same time you are looking at it influenced by the force of feeling.

ÍMPETU: How do you experience the satisfaction of seeing one of your finished works? Does the artist ever feel satisfied?

LITA: No, it is a very short, temporary satisfaction, of an instant. The search for the true essence is a bottomless emptiness, an insatiable fullness, it is a detachment from life and death, they are small temporary deliveries, something much greater than the human being: passion. And better than passion could be said, the approach to Art.

IMPETU: What makes your art free?

LITA: Trusting it. Precisely in the artistic moment that I am in, what I do are enormous exercises of freedom. I do not mean to say that I have reached the point of feeling absolutely free, but of course, this has to be the main objective of an artist. Exercising, taking risks, surrendering unconditionally to the need that art demands, to necessities. It makes me free to think that my dedication is not individual and makes me strive to understand the collective inheritance, this helps me to tame the ego that disturbs the creativity of an artist.

IMPETU: In your studio, as he stated in one of his interviews: painting solves his problems, fights with his soul, reconciles with his heart; his ethics pulls his hair, brings him flowers, and drags him around the tables looking for the afterlife. Art, in this way, accompanies the human being from its origin, as the own concern for the afterlife. Tell us about his ideas about this learning relationship.

LITA: When I enter my study there are two very present characters, "the huntress" and "the servant" and it is these two characters that make me decide whether to move or to paralyze me, to succeed or to fail, they are in the process friends and enemies of oneself. This is what makes the insides open and you can reach the depths of your own feeling. Art does not want pieces or remains, it wants everything, everything that that human being contains when you are close to it. These are my days in the studio. This is my learning.

Lita Cabellut (1961, Spain) is a wide-field artist living and working in the Netherlands. Her condition as an artist in her fullness, with a torrential force and an extraordinary capacity for work, makes her artistic activity develop in multiple disciplines. She not only touches painting, but the linguistic variables that reach all genres, from sculpture to photography, from installation to video or performance, without excluding operatic scenography, illustration, and graphic work. Without eluding her poetry

Cabellut is recognized as the third most quoted Spanish artist and her works have been exhibited in many museums around the world including Seoul Art Center, Korea; Contemporary Art Museum, Sicily, Italy; CSMVS, Mumbai, India. Her work is included in the permanent collections of various museums such as the Goya IberCaja Museum, Zaragoza, Spain; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sicily, Italy; The Fendi Collection, Italy; Museu Europeu d’Art Modern, Vila Casas Foundation, Spain; Théâtre Mogador, France; Copelouzos, Greece; The Joop & Janine van de Ende Foundation, The Paul van Rensch Foundation, The Netherlands.

Lita Cabellut grew up in Barcelona and was adopted at the age of twelve by a Catalan family who gave her access to the knowledge of Spanish masters at the Prado Museum, after which she immediately dedicated her passion to art. She moved to Holland at the age of 19, where she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam.

Over the years, Cabellut has developed a unique technique characterized by large-scale canvases that combine traditional techniques of frescoes and modern applications of paint. The human being and the social message, central themes in Lita Cabellut's work are expressed mainly through her large-format portraits.

Lita Cabellut Artist of the year 2021 Lita Cabellut has been chosen "Artist of the year 2021" in the Netherlands among eight finalists. The Artist of the Year choice is the oldest and by far the largest election in the art field in the Netherlands. Due to the staggered configuration with four electoral rounds, in which both a large panel of experts and the public cast their votes during the election period, the result shows the extent to which Dutch art and artists are widely appreciated. This year thousands of votes were cast again.

Barbara Nanning finished second, followed by Claudy Jongstra and Theo Jansen. Zoro Feigl, Iris van Herpen, Michael Raedecker, and Arno Kramer came in from fifth to eighth respectively. These eight artists also top the "Gallery of Contemporary Artists", the annual list of the hundred most appreciated Dutch visual artists.

IMPETU: What is your inspiration for shaping a peak human experience such as death through painting?

LITA: Life and death go together; I perceive life with the aspect that life and death are soul mates. They are inseparable. The first breath of the human being is already a path to death. I materialize with the same vitality and with the same intensity of feeling as I celebrate life. Death has always been very present, reminding me of the crucial moments in my life.

IMPETU: Death and testimony. What do they mean to you? LITA: Testimony is an illusion of the moment; death is a reality of the human being. The testimony is capricious because the memories are not reliable, the memory of the experiences is whimsical in what remains of them. But death is faithful, death walks with you. Death is a faithful companion; it does not leave you in any corner of existence. And the testimony is like a written word on the beach, history can simply erase it with a small wave.

IMPETU: At what point does art appear in your life?

LITA: On several occasions when I was very young, I was caught by images like the reflection of a rainbow in a puddle with oil on the street. I have memories of going through a facade and being completely hypnotized by the color with which they had painted it, ocher, blue and green ... and to my soul, I sensed that my eyes were going to have many visual landscapes and magical nuances.

IMPETU: What internal force takes hold of you every time you are faced with a blank canvas? What are you thinking about?

LITA: Life and death. My soul is willing to die, to give everything to reach that essence that I want to touch and feel and my intellect always rescues me with the nails of life. That force is a dance, it is a balance between reason and delirium.

IMPETU: What emotion does the work of Federico García Lorca transmit to you?

LITA: The power of integration. It is a sensation that I could hardly describe because it contains so much power! The concrete and the abstract, the geometric and the arrhythmic, how can I explain it to you? The word power of Federico, from Lorca, invokes me that it is everywhere, in a stone, in a river, in a grain of sand, in a tree, in a bird's song, in the cry of a murdered person, it is everywhere. In all elements at the same time, for me, it is mud and air.

IMPETU: How do you approach each new project? What inspires you?

LITA: The illusion, the need to communicate, the hunger to delve into the subject, the projects are simply an excuse to feel alive.

IMPETU: What is the language of colors for Lita Cabellut?

LITA: My first vocabulary, the one that allowed me to talk to you. Colors are part of my muscle and the substance of my blood.

IMPETU: What do you find in the photorealistic portrait that you cannot find in another pictorial genre? Is it a search for the living in art? Or of death?

LITA: I would not place my work as a photorealist portrait, I am precisely very far from what we call realism, my intention is to get closer to reality. My obsession is to reach the eye with that where things are not in their place and change perspective at the same time you are looking at it influenced by the force of feeling.

ÍMPETU: How do you experience the satisfaction of seeing one of your finished works? Does the artist ever feel satisfied?

LITA: No, it is a very short, temporary satisfaction, of an instant. The search for the true essence is a bottomless emptiness, an insatiable fullness, it is a detachment from life and death, they are small temporary deliveries, something much greater than the human being: passion. And better than passion could be said, the approach to Art.

IMPETU: What makes your art free?

LITA: Trusting it. Precisely in the artistic moment that I am in, what I do are enormous exercises of freedom. I do not mean to say that I have reached the point of feeling absolutely free, but of course, this has to be the main objective of an artist. Exercising, taking risks, surrendering unconditionally to the need that art demands, to necessities. It makes me free to think that my dedication is not individual and makes me strive to understand the collective inheritance, this helps me to tame the ego that disturbs the creativity of an artist.

IMPETU: In your studio, as he stated in one of his interviews: painting solves his problems, fights with his soul, reconciles with his heart; his ethics pulls his hair, brings him flowers, and drags him around the tables looking for the afterlife. Art, in this way, accompanies the human being from its origin, as the own concern for the afterlife. Tell us about his ideas about this learning relationship.

LITA: When I enter my study there are two very present characters, "the huntress" and "the servant" and it is these two characters that make me decide whether to move or to paralyze me, to succeed or to fail, they are in the process friends and enemies of oneself. This is what makes the insides open and you can reach the depths of your own feeling. Art does not want pieces or remains, it wants everything, everything that that human being contains when you are close to it. These are my days in the studio. This is my learning.

ÍMPETU Nr. 5 muerte y solo muerte

DIALOGARTE una conversación con Lita Cabellut

Lita Cabellut (1961, España) es una artista de campo amplio que vive y trabaja en los Países Bajos. Su condición de artista en plenitud, con una fuerza torrencial y una capacidad extraordinaria de trabajo, hace que su actividad artística se desarrolle en múltiples disciplinas. No solo toca la pintura, sino las variables lingüísticas que alcanzan a la totalidad de los géneros, desde la escultura a la fotografía, desde la instalación al video o la performance, sin excluir la escenografía operística, la ilustración y la obra gráfica. Sin eludir la poesía.

Cabellut es reconocida por ser la tercera artista española más cotizada y sus trabajos han sido expuestas en numerosos museos alrededor del mundo incluyendo: Seul Art Center, Corea; Contemporary Art Museum, Sicilia, Italia; CSMVS, Bombay, India. Su trabajo está incluido en las colecciones permanentes de varios museos como Museo Goya IberCaja, Zaragoza, España; Museo de Arte Contemporánea, Sicilia, Italia; The Fendi Collection, Italia; Museu Europeu d’Art Modern, Fundación Vila Casas, España; Théâtre Mogador, Francia; Copelouzos, Grecia; The Joop & Janine van de Ende Foundation, The Paul van Rensch Foundation, Países Bajos.

Lita Cabellut creció en Barcelona y fue adoptada a los doce años por una familia catalana que le facilito su acceso al conocimiento de los maestros españoles en el Museo del Prado, después de lo cual ella inmediatamente dedicó su pasión al arte. Se mudó a Holanda a la edad de 19, donde estudió en la Academia Gerrit Rietveld en Amsterdam.

A lo largo de los años, Cabellut ha desarrollado una técnica única caracterizada por lienzos a gran escala que combinan técnicas tradicionales de los frescos y aplicaciones modernas de la pintura. El ser humano y el mensaje social, temas centrales en la obra de Lita Cabellut se expresan principalmente a través de sus retratos de gran formato.

Lita Cabellut Artista del año 2021

Lita Cabellut ha sido elegida “Artista del año 2021” en Países Bajos entre ocho finalistas. La elección de Artista del año es la más antigua y, con mucho, la elección más grande en el campo del arte en los Países Bajos. Debido a la configuración escalonada con cuatro rondas electorales, en las que tanto un gran panel de expertos como el público emitieron sus votos durante el período de las elecciones, el resultado muestra hasta qué punto el arte y los artistas holandeses son ampliamente apreciados. Este año se volvieron a emitir miles de votos.

Barbara Nanning terminó en segundo lugar, seguida de Claudy Jongstra y Theo Jansen. Zoro Feigl, Iris van Herpen, Michael Raedecker y Arno Kramer quedaron respectivamente del quinto al octavo lugar. Estos ocho artistas también encabezan la “Galería de Artistas Contemporáneos”, la lista anual de los cien artistas visuales holandeses más apreciados.

ÍMPETU: ¿Cuál es su inspiración para dar forma mediante la pintura a una experiencia humana cumbre como es la muerte?

LITA: La vida y la muerte van juntos, yo percibo la vida con el aspecto de que la vida y la muerte son almas gemelas. Son inseparables. El primer suspiro del ser humano ya es un camino hacia la muerte. Materializo con la misma vitalidad y con la misma intensidad de sentimiento como celebro la vida. La muerte siempre ha estado muy presente recordándome los momentos cruciales de mi vida.

ÍMPETU: Muerte y testimonio. ¿Qué significan para Ud.?

LITA: Testimonio es una ilusión del momento, muerte es una realidad del ser humano. El testimonio es caprichoso porque los recuerdos no son fiables, el recuerdo de las experiencias es antojadizo en lo que queda de ellos. Pero la muerte es fiel, la muerte camina contigo. La muerte es un acompañante fiel, no te deja en cualquier esquina de la existencia. Y el testimonio es como palabra en la playa escrita, la historia lo puede borrar simplemente con una pequeña ola.

ÍMPETU: ¿En qué momento aparece el arte en su vida?

LITA: En varias ocasiones siendo ya muy niña me atrapaban imágenes como el reflejo de un arcoíris con aceite en un charco en la calle. Tengo recuerdos de pasar por una fachada y quedarme completamente hipnotizada por el color con el que habían pintado la misma, ocres, azules y verdes…ya mi alma intuía que mis ojos iban a tener muchísimos paisajes visuales y matices mágicos.

ÍMPETU: ¿Qué fuerza interna se adueña de usted cada vez que se enfrenta a un lienzo en blanco? ¿En qué piensa?

LITA: La vida y la muerte. Mi alma esta dispuesta a morir, a entregarlo todo para llegar a esa esencia que quiero tocar y sentir y mi intelecto me rescata siempre con las uñas de la vida. Esa fuerza es una danza, es un equilibrio entre la razón y el delirio.

ÍMPETU: ¿Qué emoción le transmite la obra de Federico García Lorca?

LITA: El poder de la integración. Es una sensación que casi no podría describirla porque contiene ¡tanta tanta potencia!, lo concreto y lo abstracto, lo geométrico y lo arrítmico, ¿como explicarte? El poder de palabra de Federico, de Lorca, me invoca que está en todos los sitios, en una piedra, en un rio, en un grano de arena, en un árbol, en un canto de un pájaro, en el grito de un asesinado, está en todos los sitios. En todos los elementos al mismo tiempo, para mi, es barro y aire.

ÍMPETU: ¿De qué manera afronta cada nuevo proyecto? ¿Qué le inspira?

LITA: La ilusión, la necesidad de comunicarme, el hambre de profundizar en el tema, los proyectos son simplemente una excusa para sentirme viva.

ÍMPETU: ¿Qué es el lenguaje de los colores para Lita Cabellut?

LITA: Mi primer vocabulario, el que me permitió hablar contigo. Los colores son parte de mi músculo y la sustancia de mi sangre.

ÍMPETU: ¿Qué encuentra en el retrato fotorrealista que no encuentra en otro género pictórico? ¿Acaso es una búsqueda de lo vivo en el arte? ¿O de la muerte?

LITA: Yo no situaría mi obra como retrato fotorrealista, justamente estoy muy lejos de lo que nosotros llamamos realismo, mi intención es acercarme a la realidad. Mi obsesión es llegar al ojo con aquello donde las cosas no están en su sitio y cambian de perspectiva en el mismo momento en que lo estas mirando influidas por la fuerza del sentimiento.

ÍMPETU: ¿Cómo vive la satisfacción de ver una de tus obras terminadas? ¿El artista se siente satisfecho alguna vez?

LITA: No, es una satisfacción cortísima, temporal, de un instante. La búsqueda a la verdadera esencia es un vacío sin fondo, una plenitud insaciable, es un desprendimiento de la vida y de la muerte, son pequeñas entregas temporales, algo mucho mas grande que el ser humano: la pasión. Y mejor que la pasión se podría decir, el acercamiento al Arte.

ÍMPETU: ¿Qué hace libre a tu arte?

LITA: Fiarme de él. Justamente en el momento artístico que estoy lo que realizo son enormes ejercicios de libertad. No quiero decir con esto que he llegado al punto de sentirme libre absolutamente, pero por supuesto esto tiene que ser el objetivo principal de un artista. Ejercitar, arriesgarse, entregarse sin condiciones a la necesidad que reclama el arte, a las necesidades. Me hace libre pensar que mi dedicación no es individual y hace que me esfuerce a entender la herencia colectiva, esto me ayuda a domar el ego que perturba tanto la creación de un artista.

ÍMPETU: En su taller, como afirmaba en alguna de sus entrevistas: pintando soluciona sus problemas, pelea con su alma, se reconcilia con su corazón; su ética le tira de los pelos, le lleva flores y le arrastra por las mesas buscando el más allá. El arte, de esta manera, acompaña al ser humano desde su origen, como la propia preocupación por el más allá. Cuéntenos sus ideas acerca de esta relación de aprendizaje.

LITA: Cuando entro en mi estudio hay dos caracteres muy presentes, “la cazadora” y “la servidora” y son estos dos personajes los que hacen que decida que me mueva o que me paralice, que triunfe o que fracase, son en el proceso amigos y enemigos de uno mismo. Esto es lo que hace que las entrañas se abran y que puedas llegar a lo más profundo de tu propio sentimiento. El arte no quiere trocitos, ni restos, quiere todo, todo lo que contiene ese ser humano cuando estas cerca de ello. Estos son mis días en el estudio. Este es mi aprendizaje.