Some notes about the Madeiran artist and teacher Guilhermina da Luz (1947-2019) featured under the rubric Um dia, uma obra ("One day, one work").
Guilhermina da Luz was born in Ponta do Sol, in 1947, and lived more than two decades in Luanda, then returned to Funchal.
Africa linked her, in a very unique way, to certain colours, materials and graphic references, which appear in her creations as a revival of memories – obsidian pictograms inscribed in painting on canvas, reproduced in screen printing or engraved in wooden sculptures - and which refer to the art and culture of the Northeast of Angola, as well as to a visual alphabet that establishes a primeval space, of simplicity and innocence. Guilhermina recreates this alphabet in a very specific transmutation, suitable for her aesthetic expression and narrative vocation. A kind of origin or space of dialogue of origins, which she goes back to, in a stronger way, during the exhibition entitled Na Imensidão de Azul Que Não Existe ("In the Immensity of Blue That Doesn’t Exist"), held at Quinta Magnólia, in 2007. Some of the exhibited pieces had the particularity to be worked on the front and back and to critically challenge us in view of the imposition of the virtual world on the natural, on the senses.
The artist developed a regular artistic activity, in parallel with teaching in artistic higher education: from 1981 until retirement, she practised her activity, first at the High Institute of Plastic Arts of Madeira (ISAPM), then at the High Institute of Art and Design (ISAD) and subsequent course structures integrated at the University of Madeira, with focus on the chairs of Visual Form and Composition, Screen Printing and Plastic Arts. The research carried out between 1985 and 1993, which she called A Serigrafia Artística, Técnica Serigráfica ao Serviço da Criação Artística ("The Artistic Screen Printing, Serigraphic Technique at the Service of Artistic Creation"), was associated with a period of her very productive work in terms of artistic creation by serigraphic processes.
Credits: MUDAS. Madeira Contemporary Art Museum
