Artist Almeida de Moura uses a chromatic focused on the cadmium red and dark blue cobalt, linked to shades of the skin tone of the subjects she represents. Almeida de Moura, entrusts to her canvas the feelings and emotion of the moment, seeking to convey to the observer the same vibrations that she reproduces pictorially in her works.

After a careful analysis of the paintings, we note that unconsciously there is a capacity to emerge and the constant need to bring up the feelings that accompany it on a daily basis, such as the melancholy of past memories, and the joy of an arriving new day (twilight and sunsets).

In the pictorial work of Almeida de Moura we note an extreme need for light while in the palatte used by the artist the tones are without any bright light but focused on inflamed red and blue colors.

Quite often in Almeida de Moura's work appears a female bust, represented in various poses, elegant and sober, with a net face and clear and limpid skin.

Joy, sadness, a will to live, which internally characterized the artist notwithstanding the day-to-day responsibilities that everyone must face, this is the key to an art which by its various facets can be defined "Expressionist and at the same time informal" with a brief but very accentuated reference to the painting in the 1920s and40 by brushwork and floating spatula due to a very skilled hand at work the paint on the canvas.

The entire work is magnificent considering that an artist who combines daydreaming with a semi-abstract composition, inflamed tones and in net contrast with the fair complexions of the artist's soul, (the sujects often have faces with identical features) cached at the very moment when emotion is felt.

The originality is particular by the numerous references to historical works by the adopted chromatic similar for example to the palette of a few French impressionists artists of the late nineteenth century, similar as well to Art nouveau and the expressionism of Alberto Burri by the "fire" red tone adopted by the author.

Original, stylish, modern, the painting of Clementina Almeida de Moura, in fact contains the technical mastery necessary to the artistc creative representation of everyday's live.

Dr. Alessandro Costanza

Art critic (Sicily Italy)

 

 

The "wavelength" with which the artist sets foot into the secretive, brings forth a deviation between what is and what seems to be. The figures seem to be enchanted, they go forth to come together again in a monumental equilibrium like a fable which introduces the dream.

As such, the woman is a poetic concept, a fiery future in the making. An unspoilt world in which the gold of the memory is being fashioned. A noble and mysterious chest, simple and solemn like a waterbeam in which the environment reflects itself and gives off an image of the enigma. In that focuspoint we find the beautiful dilemma: the sleeping facial traits and the puffy image give away an own manner of attitude and being.

Clementina Almeida de Moura throws a bridge leading us over an abyss. She rids herself of her natural schedule to bind herself to another. We can only presume the facial traits with invisible indications. They present to us something unreachable which grant us permission to the enigma, a modest way to invite us to the pleasure of beholding the female with inevitable poetry.

The colours are as rooted: red and purple together with the gold of the skin translate the lifeforce. Blue gives the touch of wisdom in the visualisation. Imperishable! The body is being exhibited, delicate and modest, although without really showing itself. It is a great model, a rare conformation of itself with another, that eternal constatation which disappoints many beings. Yet this is not the case here. Here, the density of the soul is impenetrable, yet from the face rises something that is untouchable, which protects the enigma. The figure itself arranges for changes from face to face. The appeal of the bodyforms becomes surreal to gain a transcendental effect and put its mark on the description.

De Moura provides her work with a concrete temperament exceeding the image as such. The look of it contains the deep, beautiful being in charachter and soul. Therefore the forth bringing of the face becomes a pressing something. It conceals and expresses itself at the same time: a silent music, a rare concerto to conquer the thought which is to be attained, the original being.

The aesthetic faces by de Moura arise from daylight's gold, limbs are forged out of the noble metal as well. They are as a shield, a maze which attracts and averts.

The composition is made out of a system of emblems, showing a describing capability, it is unusual and is not only academic. De Moura uses feminity, especially its solemn presence. The inherent rules indicate the inevitable: the world of the infinite small within the infinite great.

The bodies are flowing elegantly in their peaceful softness, their dance or meditation, as vital symbols which linked to light develop the entirety in the beautiful embrace of the tale.

The narration is delightful. Enchanting. There lies the very nature of the art of painting. Thanks to a personal style, she becomes a penetrating and dominating music, enwrapping herself in a shawl, the time of a Samba, the time of an objection concerning herself. There are the motives of the enigmatic faces.

Maria Teresa Palitta

Art critic (Rome - Italy)

 

 

A feeling for beauty, the kind of absolute beauty hidden within the most simplest things, capture this beauty and express it us, there is the main motivation for these works. The sources of inspiration are therefor obviously taken out of the every day life, out of experiences and dreams, whatever the time, region or country, a kind of apology of life, rejection of dead by this kind of essential beauty.

R. Haesaerts

 

You see the nother as a friend and you embrace him with warm and bright colours, with soft and delicate gestures and you give him a smile filled with confidence in what is a certainty to you: humanity exists! And I find my way again, my challenge and my hope.

A.J.Almeida de Moura

 

The most recent works of Clementina Almeida de Moura are made of what we could describe as a pictorial enigma. Heads, usually female, faces in absence of facial traits or merely shown by shadows, a sketched nose, eyebrows or lips... Backgrounds where the blue, the yellow ochre, the red and some green spots call forth a landscape, if only sketched, suggested by the presence of these tonalities. It could be that, by doing so, the artist wanted to show some element of reality which, just like the figures, would only be present by means of allusion.

Nonetheless, these women appeal us. By their beauty, their grace or their hair if anything. But also, and rather contradictory, because of their personality and their presence. The absence of facial traits does not in any way prevent the impression of a subjective reality, of a lived history. Each one of these figures imposes its own traits. Some call forth sensuality, others a certain melancholy. A wide range of attitudes, feelings and expressions hide in these figures surrounded by the secret of anonymity.

The timeless beauty is attained by confident attitudes, the paleness of the skin complexions, the splendour of the hair and the simplicity of the dress. The artist uses a very striking choice of colours for the backgrounds and some details. This chromatic struggle with intense and mixed colours is the only way the artist allows herself to work on the image. Indeed it does seem that it is not Clementina Almeida de Moura's primary concern to leave behind a sort of figure enigma, open for many explanations, but rather to create a certain image of beauty. Anyone can see the reflection of a known or expected face, a desire, an idea, a being of flesh and blood or a ghost from the past.

D.Paternoster
Art in Belgium

 

 

Partly by using simple shapes, partly by befriending abstract and figurative elements in a pronounced pallet of colours, the artist leads us into a fascinating world, intimate and robust at the same time, the origin of which is to be found in her native country. Especially remarkable are her women's faces of which the traits are subtly placed, as if she wants the spectator to identify himself with this subtle composition leading him to the richer content. To search for absolute beauty, hidden in the simplest of things, to register and explain this inner beauty, that is her motivation, the leadmotive for her work. A universe to be discovered...

The faceless heads of these women intrigue and go beyond the pictorial. They make the onlookers curious for the actual meaning and for the way of thinking of the artist. They make the whole more subtle and the contents richer.

W. Boon

After the VICENZA exhibition dedicated to the memory of Ludwig van Beethoven, we offer CLEMENTINA ALMEIDA DE MOURA a reminder of her participation.
The Portuguese Clementina Almeida de Moura who participates, from Belgium where she lives, in the exhibition in memory of Ludwig van Beethoven organized by the Art Movement of the XXI Century in Vicenza, is first and foremost an artist of rare descriptive elegance, a gift to which is added imagination creativity and considerable ability to speculate. These are partly spontaneous gifts but to a large extent the fruit, to quote Giacomo Leopardi, of hard-earned study.
Born in Porto, she graduated in painting at the École d’Art António Arroio in Lisbon and then continued her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of the Portuguese capital and also obtained a Diploma in Visual Arts.
The work that is exhibited on this occasion in the ART.U 'Gallery. of Vicenza bears a title with a clear Beethovenian imprint, " La Pastorale ", which is also the traditional denomination of the Sixth Symphony of the genius of Bonn. Additionally, the author notes that the musician's ancestors were from a place near her residence. Beethoven was a great admirer of nature, partly instinctively and partly for the Kantian suggestions in aesthetics, which according to the thinker of Königsberg in natural phenomena could draw the sublime. In this regard, we must add that the painter identifies the relationship between the music of the Sixth and the noises of creation in an expressionist key, that is, marked not by imitation but by the desire to express the intimate reactions of the soul to the suggestions of the external world.
Beethoven himself had overturned the role of mere user by hoping that the trees and rocks would intuit and reproduce the feelings of man and not the other way around. In turn, Clementina Almeida hopes to enter the thicket of trees equipped with pen and paper to take note of the solemn harmonies of creation. The painting tries to render this wish in visual terms and does so by sketching elegant chromatic harmonies translated into highly suggestive symbols with colors that we must consider worthy of Maurice de Vlaminck for the choice of colors lacking realism and full of spiritual suggestions.