Naive art . It is one that developed a group of artists whom they called naifs or amateurs because they did not dedicate themselves to painting as their main activity, but rather outside their respective professional occupations. They had no academic training, in all cases they were self-taught creators.
Summary
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- 1 History
- 2 Features
- 3 Concept
- 4 Reason
- 5 Outstanding Figures of Art
- 6 Sources
History
Term used to describe the pictorial, sculptural or architectural production made by a person who, in general, has no previous artistic training. In most cases the naïve artists have been self-taught. Numerous expressions have been used to describe this art (innate art, instinctual art, neo-primitivism) and its authors (occasional painters, popular masters of reality, modern primitives), but none of them seem totally satisfactory. If naïve art is, in general, outside the history of styles, schools or avant-gardes, however, its authors, although they have not received any academic training, do not live outside the world and are sensitive to their origins, to popular arts and traditions (forging, ceramics , wood, fabrics, embroidery, lace) or widely disseminated academic models, from the postal calendars of yesteryear to the catalogs and advertising of the modern world.
The first naive art, that of the rural world, was often inspired by the creative imagination of artisans who lived in a relatively autarkic environment . This art disappeared with the start of serial production during the Industrial Revolution and, although it was despised for a long time, it was subsequently revalued by romanticism and nationalist demands of the 19th century before becoming an ethnographic object. Naive art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, very different from the previous one, it was closely linked to urban uprooting: it longed for the lost nature conceived as idyllic from a nostalgic vision of the past and sought its biblical, mythological, exotic, legendary, dreamlike and sometimes surreal origins. This art did not want to represent everyday life nor did it have revolutionary ambitions, but instead sought a simple and, at times, idealized representation of the world.
features
The main characteristics of naive art are: very precisely defined contours, lack of perspective, volumetric sensation achieved through extraordinary coloring, meticulous and detailed painting and great expressive power, although the drawing may be incorrect.
Concept
The naïve concept of French naïf or naïve alludes not only to a certain naivety that, applied in art, is formalized in a graceful lack of technical and theoretical knowledge: in some cases a system of perspectives or a line of flight is often lacking, as well as a adjusted criteria of proportions or an elaborate chromatic work. In this sense, the naïve has been associated, on many occasions exaggeratedly, with the heterogeneous group misnamed “primitive art” and with “children’s art”; Be that as it may, in French the concept of naïf and naïveté is not only limited to the naïve and naïve but also to a pleasing simplicity that, in art, is transposed by avoiding gimmicks or sophistication. In this sense, the naïve can be given for two different but not exclusive reasons:
Reason
Although the genuine naive by definition cannot have predetermined motives, there are usually (due to the cultural environment in which it arises) themes related to peasant life, family life, customs, traditions and religion, always represented with great imagination and vivacity. . By extension, the name “naive art” is improperly given to one in which aspects of naive art itself are intentionally emulated (spontaneously naive art).
Outstanding figures of art
Among the most prominent representatives of this art is the French painter Henri Rousseau, known as the Customs Officer. Avant-garde movements such as Der Blaue Reiter also underlined the importance of the naïf in the evolution of modern art. The World’s Fair in Paris in 1937 unveiled many of these artists. After World War II, exhibitions multiplied: Baden-Baden in 1961 , Paris and Rotterdam in 1964 , the traveling exhibition of American naïve artists in 1967 – 1968 , Zurich in 1975 and the Rousseau retrospective in 1984 – 1985 at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Currently there are many naïve painters recognized in Europe : Aristide Caillaud in France , Orneore Meteli in Italy , Miguel Vivancos in Spain and Théophilos Hadzimichael in Greece . In the socialist countries, with an art linked to national folklore, true schools of naive painting have developed, with the Georgian Niko Pirosmanachvili in Russia and Ivan Generalic in Yugoslavia . In the United States , the naive movement had its maximum expression in the artistic tradition of the pioneers and traveling portraitists, Edward Hicks being one of its most prominent representatives. In latin americaNaïve art, always related to ancestral traditions, is often linked to various animist cults. There are different museums dedicated to this artistic style, such as that of Laval, Rousseau’s hometown.
