Sara Modiano, In Memoriam
Artists always die too soon. There are pieces left halfway done, unfinished series, and in cases like the plastic artist Sara Modiano’s, born in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1951, we are left with a feeling that time had not yet given her the acknowledgement that her work deserved. There was in her art, made with that honesty that goes beyond the trends and demands of the market, a unique way of integrating the play of the light and the materiality of the metallic warps to the always changing expressive gestures of the face and the body as forms of identity. Light, the shape of the body, and the metal material were forged into a distinct work that was able to communicate a profound reflection of the self. It explored human gestures along with the material notion of metallic in a way that captured the faces of pain, or of a deep meditation state, or of the drama of existing itself, while also suggesting the evanescence, the unreality of these emotions. The structure of her sculptured works -often formed by layers of drama that enclosed, surrounded or overlapped the human image- suggested a tension between two constellations of forms that brought together opposite aesthetic slopes: the serene, rational reflection of the geometric and the visceral presence of the expressionist.
This tense conjunction that her art achieved between the geometric form and the volcanic universe of the self took her art to contemporary museums in different places around the world. In 1975 she received the honorary mention of the Visual Arts in Valparaíso, Chile, and her work was presented in the magazine Art in America. She participated at the V Biennial in Sidney, Australia, the XVI Biennial in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and various other biennials before moving to Mallorca, Spain in 2000. She stayed there and worked full time on her work with wire net, lenses capable of magnifying details and imagery developed though self portraits. Since 2003 she moved to Florida where she continued to develop ideas on identity. She looked for an experience for the spectator that would allow him or her to identify with her image or to reaffirm their distances. Exploring for years the shape of the cube, the use of wire mesh material, and the conjunction of her own image, Modiano “looked internally in order to encapsulate an intimate and personal space. Being introspective, learning, questioning and interrogating herself with an almost painstaking scrutiny”. Hernán Carrara, who in his capacity as director for the International Kids Fund's "IKF Latin American Art Auction", selected her work for the event on four occasions (2005-2008), referred to Sara Modiano as follows: “Her work had reached maturity in recent years as a result of a profound and important inner search which led her to break free of old restraints as a woman, a mother, and a wife to give way to a completely new being...”. Arte al Día dedicated in her honor an extensive article by Carol Damian in 2007. Recently Modiano had participated in the exhibition “ Artes”, in Santo Domingo. Her work forms part of a permanent collection of the Modern Art Museum in Bogotá, MamBo.
