THE “PRIMIMODERNISMO” - A NEW TENDENCY OF THE CONTEMPORARY ART CREATED TO ENHANCE TRUE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION SINCE 1980.

By Maria Norey Agudelo H. de Mejia “Noriam” (Visual Artist).

The visual arts are challenging the continuity of history and transforming its course. Nevertheless, we perceive in the maximum expression of all artistic creativity the manifestations that have historically pointed out periods of great transcendency. This is why visual artists since the late eighteenth century have given Home to the search for legitimate individuals who freely express their feelings -- exclusively by allowing them respect for their insight and thus leading them to fulfill their objectives. Romanticism was the first cultural movement that emerged at the end of the 18th century whichbroke with the traditional values of their time. Previously, the Enlightenment and Neoclassicist Movements had also as their primary objective a protest against pure traditionalism and its questionable rules in order to demand freedom of feelings that would conceive of the human as a being in its environment, and therefore for humanity to achieve its intrinsic and tangible contents. In a unique way, this would void any type of controversy. These last movements originated in England and Germany and had their full development at the beginning of the 19th century, granting essential contributions to the visual arts. These later manifested with the emergence of the Vanguard Currents of the twentieth century. One of those currents was Surrealism, which succeeded by its extreme freedom of human sensibility; it was a movement that faced the most difficult controversies, but nevertheless, achieved the beginning of new alternatives for future generations. It is these developments on which I have based my own art work.

The basic historic art aspects described above brought me in 1980 to create a new tendency in contemporary art, denominated as “The Primimodernismo.” This concept is the result of a personal investigation, conceived in a holistic and eclectic way, to finally innovate a new trend in contemporary art, one that unifies the core of the most important visual arts in history from their origins into the contemporary art of the 20th century. The Primimodernismo also pursued the restitution of the origins of visual art, merging them with the main artistic tendencies or visual currents that have emerged in the course of time. These are conjugated with the pragmatism and the hypothesis of Human Values extracted and condensed from their origins to the present day. All its tangible and aesthetic contents differ from other visual tendencies that are highlighted over time. These expressions, by means of twodimensional images and three-dimensional object, stimulate a great diversity of feelings to those who observe them, achieving a conjugation of work, artist, and spectator into a mysterious and infinite space.

Two of the Master Pieces that represent a ll of the above aspects are “The Human Values” (1985) and “The Human Rescue”
(1987). Both mural size paintings (oil on canvas), explore, in the artist's unique style, the means of being alive and productive in a resilient environment. These master pieces fulfill the characteristics of The Primimodernismo by the deformation of human body and the use of figures that alternate with different backgrounds, colors, and textures from ancient and modern times, combined into one single scenario.

Some of the most important objectives of The Primimodernismo are:

To restore the fundamentals of the origin of visual art, represented in pre-Columbian art and later primitive manifestations.

To restore the "Human Values" (Ethics and Principles), which represent the core of society, but also being the innate qualities adhered to by the human being in the midst of a very complex world.

To stimulate the public in general to compensate the social coexistence of the individual in order to achieve a true resiliency for present and future generations.

To persuade artists and teachers to keep their interest in the research of the visual arts, based on this transcendental result, as it is "The Primimodernismo."

This proposal is to promote The Primimodernismo at a national and international level, showing the transcende nce of its
invaluable content, using it as communication bridge between past and the present. In fact, this is an Invitation to all
governmental agencies, artists, museums, galleries, cultural entities, and artistic teachers, among others, to unify our efforts to promulgate in a way and integrate the existence of this new trend In the visual arts. The Primimodernismo is also a scenario to stimulate the general public and compensate the intrinsic values of the human being by means of this new tendency that has been constituted as an artistic means of communication for the society since 1980.

Norey Agudelo's artwork has brought a significant new trend of painting to the United States from South America. In a 1980 exhibition at the Government Hall of Valle in Cali, Colombia, Ms. Agudelo introduced a new concept called "El Primimodernismo," as a personal idea based both on her observation of the visionary motifs in Pre-Colombian Indian art, and the styles of Universal Modernism. Incorporating these principles into a theory she describes as "Human Activation Through History," she presents a sympathetic view of the human effects of major international events, such as the 9/11 tragedy. Noriam's art elevates the spiritual sense of destiny and human drama.

In the development of her personal style from the roots of Pre-Colombian and Modernism, Noriam has explored aspects of these roots by painting softly animated figures, reminiscent of the Latin American Social Realists of the 1930’s, against the backdrop of semi-abstracted landscapes and architectural cityscapes. In the case of her series begun on September 11^th and 12^th , 2001 -- "Flight of the Lambs", "World Wide Panorama," and "Wake Up from the Spiritual Life" -- a frenzy of color tells the intensity of the story. Faces show expressions of anguish, hope, or remembrance, set against the scene of collapsed chrome and steel upright shards, the broken buildings of the World Trade Center. In each painting, the blending of bright colors convey the immensity of this unprecedented tragedy in its human scale and meaning. The surface base of her paintings are the soft texture of two-dimensional patterns, which emphasizes the foreground of primitive forms.

In "Human Rescue," a mural painting, Norey Agudelo uses stylized figures combined with flat color to emphasize man as a suffering yet universal being. In a later work," Flight of the Lambs," her figures are charged with highly expressive color and form, and through a triangulation in the placement of the two figures and a dove, tell the story at a glance.

Focus is placed at the center of human emotion. Facial expressions are refined into three-dimensional personalities with sensitive and subtly-expressed individualities, each providing an evocative depth of human understanding-- primary colors, like red and yellow, for primal feeling. From the complexity of backgrounds of flat colors depicting surreal locations there emerges the later interpretations of textured multi-layered dimensions: spatial realms which appear real but seem beyond time.

"Noriam" has been invited several times for a lecture about her artwork at Southern Connecticut State University and nominated for the Prince of Asturias Awards in the category of Arts 2005, which is one of the biggest honors she has achieved for her whole career. Past year the School of Medice at Yale University invited her to be one of the instructors for a local program "Art Therapy" focused in children for the community of New Haven, that is why she recently painted the mural size painting " The Victory of the Children". Other exhibits have been performed lately at Stamford for the Arts in CT, Open Studios of Greater New Haven, Art Space and future exhibits are being planned for next year 2007. Currently "Noriams" is writing her book titled: " El Primimodernismo, the new tendency of the Contemporary Art".