..'Vivir es una obra maestra' J.E.
Jorge Eielson, a self-described ‘worker of word… of image… of colour… of space,’ developed a practice that eschewed strict categorization, encompassing poetry, sculpture, painting, performance, and theatre.
Breaking out of the restrictive twodimensional boundaries of the flat surface was one of Eielson’s chief preoccupations, as was idiom, in its visual and written form. As a poet andnpainter, the artist emphasized the importance of language, and explored it from a narrative and symbolical perspective. Eielson’s paintings––most notably the Quipus series dating back to 1963––are saturated with Peruvian heritage, while simultaneously revealing a framework within which metaphor, language, color, and an almost scientific study of form are exercised.
Rising to prominence as part of the Peruvian movement known as ‘Generation 1950,’ Eielson boldly left his native Peru to relocate to Europe in 1948–first visiting Paris, then settling in Italy. Actively engaging with the cultural milieu of his adoptive countries,
Eielson befriended the likes of Raymond Hains and the members of the MADI group in Paris, and became acquainted with Alberto Burri, Mimmo Rotella and Cy Twombly, among others, in Rome.
While he maintained strong social rapports with his peers, Eielson’s art developed independently of them and their affiliate movements. Neither espousing the consumerist rhetoric challenged by pop art, nor abiding to the formal diktats of minimalism or the rigorous critical inquiry of conceptualism, Eielson’s visual output rested on a set of distinct conceptual and formal precepts.
Eielson’s series Quipus––literally “knot”––displays a language built from a shifting range of themes and variations of a single motif.. by Flavia Frigeri
Breaking out of the restrictive twodimensional boundaries of the flat surface was one of Eielson’s chief preoccupations, as was idiom, in its visual and written form. As a poet andnpainter, the artist emphasized the importance of language, and explored it from a narrative and symbolical perspective. Eielson’s paintings––most notably the Quipus series dating back to 1963––are saturated with Peruvian heritage, while simultaneously revealing a framework within which metaphor, language, color, and an almost scientific study of form are exercised.
Rising to prominence as part of the Peruvian movement known as ‘Generation 1950,’ Eielson boldly left his native Peru to relocate to Europe in 1948–first visiting Paris, then settling in Italy. Actively engaging with the cultural milieu of his adoptive countries,
Eielson befriended the likes of Raymond Hains and the members of the MADI group in Paris, and became acquainted with Alberto Burri, Mimmo Rotella and Cy Twombly, among others, in Rome.
While he maintained strong social rapports with his peers, Eielson’s art developed independently of them and their affiliate movements. Neither espousing the consumerist rhetoric challenged by pop art, nor abiding to the formal diktats of minimalism or the rigorous critical inquiry of conceptualism, Eielson’s visual output rested on a set of distinct conceptual and formal precepts.
Eielson’s series Quipus––literally “knot”––displays a language built from a shifting range of themes and variations of a single motif.. by Flavia Frigeri
