Review Lucca, Italy

What impelled me to offer hospitality for the first time in Italy to the pictorial realism of Marlies van Groenendael is the freshness and openness to innovation of this young and highly gifted artist: the passion-exciting “full” colours of her wonderful country, Holland, have nourished in her a palette of experiences directed towards the study of technique and artistic rigour.

From this rigour Marlies has drawn the essence, succeeding with enlivening energy in combining the strength of technique with the liberty of a mind in constant search of absolute perfection: but even if reality tells us unequivocally that such perfection exists only in God, in our desperate striving for this absolute, Marlies has probably already travelled far along this road.

I feel moved to describe her art as “an absolutely perfect imperfection”: in her works linearity and geometrical shapes do not remain imprisoned within the vacuousness of fixed schemes, but become a superabundance of life that bursts out towards infinity.

A musical sound pervades every single canvas of Marlies and miraculously fills with healthy optimism everyone who makes acquaintance with her utterly personal individuality. Among her admirers we find the authoritative presence of a legendary figure from the international world of painting – Maestro Antonio Possenti – who has added “flavour” to the works of Marlies by showing towards them the recognition due to a genuine and promisising artist.

And I cannot but agree with him completely.
Polychromy and monochromy.
Fusion and Fission united.
Particles that disintegrate and reintegrate, reassembling the universal element in a chiaroscuro light of seeing and not seeing, of sublime feelings and of eternal becoming:
the passion of the red that does not assault the senses but recalls a musical symphony. The whirlwind of the black and white that wed one another in a marriage that is essentially unique in kind. The fervid blue that is the natural nourisher of optimism. The sun-like brilliance of yellow, which is energy in its pure state. The green that draws on the strength of life to remind us that we should not fall victim to the fear of existence but should accept it wholeheartedly and serenely.

The grey that transports us to the peacefulness and freedom of the moments of silence that respond to our inborn need for introspection. The absolute black, the key to the darkest night that is like a reflection of our daily fears, which, if we acknowledge them, are already overcome.
This is the fascination of works that give meaning to the words

“Modernity”,
“Avant-garde”,
“Innovation”:

all of which are clothed in an absolute mastery that animates the complete artist who is Marlies van Bergen-van Groenendael, whom I thank for having brought to the attention of our city of Lucca the essence of an authentic art that turns its face towards a future that, in the light of the pastel colours of her canvases, appears truly promising and radiant ...

Giovambattista Bevacqua