Still Life with Melon; oil and gold on plywood; 66/52; 2014; €3700
Ivan Iliev
We warmly welcome Ivan Iliev, a Bulgarian painter and graphic designer of great interest.
After his studies at the Academy of Arts in Sofia, in 1990 he moved to Vienna, where he got the crowning achievement of his career in a powerfully stimulating environment. There he could set up solo exhibitions where he highlighted some of the most significant peculiarities of his homeland,
in particular his deep attention to the chromatic components which enhance his works on landscapes
and on his love for fruit and flowers, painting which he recovers both the taste for irony and formal gravity of Arcimboldo and the care for details typical of the painters of the Dutch seventeenth century. In Still Life with a Melon all the aspects mentioned get together in a pleasant synthesis.
In a composition of great geometrical accuracy where a melon cut in half with decorative purposes emerges, two diagonals, outlined with precise correspondence, exalt the very careful exhibit of fruit
kept together by the four artichokes centralizing the observation on the delightful richness of details provided by fruits which arouse the wish to taste them, so rich in life they are.
Aldo Maria Pero
