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Arts wide open

Hey! I'm Cristiana, an Italian-born young woman with a passion for linguistics, travelling and art in all its genres.

I'm doing my PhD between Germany and Israel. I currently live in Israel, where I'm all the time looking for art to talk about.

11/08/2021

Nikolai Astrup, “Midsummer Eve Bonfire”, 1917

Astrup might not be the first artist coming to your mind when thinking about Norwegian painting. Instead, one will most likely think about Munch. Yet so much happens beyond the artistic canon that is possibly way more thought-provoking.
If you happen to be in the US, you can discover more about Astrup at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, offering one of the few comprehensive exhibitions of Astrup’s works outside Norway.

Inspiration provided by Peter Schjeldahl’s article in the last New Yorker.

25/06/2021

If you’re in Munich and still wondering what to do this weekend, I highly recommend you to go to 그 사이 어딘가 - Somewhere in Between, exhib of some of the most talented South Korean artists in Munich, beautifully curated by Tina Hudelmaier and Siyoung Kim. Tina was on the spot when I visited and was nice enough to answer all of my questions and give me some insights into the curatorial process. Here are some highlights 💕 until this Saturday in Rathausgalerie Kunsthalle, inside Munich’s new city hall

17/06/2021

The absolute highlights of Fotografia Europea 2021 to me: David Jiménez, Donovan Wylie, Sophie Whettnal, Noémie Goudal, Raymond Meeks. The pure visionary beauty of creating alternative realities through the camera lens and revealing the most surreal and unreal facets of our world: this is, to me, the fil rouge through this year’s edition of Fotografia Europea.
Read more about it soon on

14/05/2021

Today I have been lucky enough to be the first visitor of the new exhibition of Erwin Olaf’s works at - also my first time as an art reporter for , entering the exhibition with a press ticket! “Erwin Olaf. Unheimlich schön - Strange beauty” is going to run until September 2021 and I would highly recommend everyone interested in politically and socially engaged photography to visit it. Or for that matter anyone interested in beauty, of which you will find plenty in Olaf’s exhibition. We’re talking about a very particular kind of beauty: the inconvenient beauty of inconvenient truths, the concentrated, uneasy beauty of bare naked bodies, the stitching beauty of isolation, the rare, uncommon beauty of exploring physical and psychological borders in our society of polished façades hiding unspoken tensions. Olaf’s works have a touch of David LaChapelle’s alienated atmospheres and many vibrant references to Robert Mapplethorpe’s disturbing solemnity.
Strange beauty. Coming soon on
@ Kunsthalle München

11/04/2021

Kunst liegt auf der Straße, und sie steht in den Regalen der Kaufhäuser

25/03/2021

“Blick zurück nach vorn”, i.e. “Glimpsing back forward” is the title of the exhibition at which I had the pleasure to visit today. I was already enthusiastic about the first Cave Painting Series by which I had gotten to know some months ago. When I discovered about the exhibition of Gregor Hildebrandt’s class at Galerie Klüser, I knew I had to go - and I was right. What struck me the most about the gallery was the absolute harmony between the exhibition and the space hosting it. The rooms are flooded with light coming in through the beautifully white-framed windows overlooking the Munich Academy of Art, creating a deep symbolic connection between the artworks and their social and cultural environment. Here is a sneak peek of the artworks which struck me the most:
-Nata Togliatti, Cave Painting III (Citrus), 2020/21 (imposingly filling the whole room with a warm light and attracting the spectator’s attention with their unexpected yet almost domestic-like presence)
-Gemma Solà, Girar el rizo, 2020
-Boris Saccone, Ophelia, 2021 (pre-Raphaelite reference with an expressionist interpretation)
-Lara Koch, Duende, 2019 (reminds me of Alexander Calder’s works)
-Julia Emslander, La pleine lune se marie avec l’asphalte noir, 2021 (Duchamp echoes in the title, the artwork itself reminds me of Alberto Burri’s work)
-Daniela Koch, Blick zurück, Blick nach vorne, 2021 (very conceptual reflection on the meaning of perspective, also because it is positioned right next to the gallery’s most beautiful window overlooking the Academy’s backyard)
@ Galerie Klüser

24/03/2021

Yet another walk in the hood, exploring Haidhausen’s beautiful pre-WWII façades and art déco flair and the hidden gems of the Au area. In spite of the growing gentrification, Au-Haidhausen still preserves a lot of its working class atmosphere. Especially in Au, there are visible traces of the many different people who inhabited this area over the decades: from migrant workers from Italy and Eastern Europe to nuns, from Jewish families to socialist activists and yet many more.
Au-Haidhausen presents many brilliant examples of how beneficial social housing projects are for diversity and well-being in urban contexts. Amongst them, the Lilienhof and the Kegelhof are the most renowned and have been existing for decade, allowing families from all the walks of life to find a home in Munich. @ Au-Haidhausen

17/02/2021

Since I’m currently busy working on my PhD thesis, I usually take a walk in my neighbourhood everyday to help me stay motivated and get fresh ideas. The neighbourhood where I live in Munich is called Haidhausen and has a lot of hidden as well as not so hidden gems. Whether you look up to the sky or down to the pavement, you’re always going to discover inspirational pieces of art scattered around. I’m grateful for these walks in Haidhausen, they never fail to remind me how much beauty there is in the world, and a lot of it yet to be discovered.
Here are some of the beautiful Madonna depictions you can find in the neighbourhood. Might as well be Italy of France, don’t you think? In fact, a part of my neighbourhood is called “Franzosenviertel”, which means “neighbourhood of the French”. Many of the street names refer to French cities where some battles of the Napoleonic wars.

16/02/2021

Boris Karafelov, Majestic love, 2014.

Boris Karafelov is an Israeli painter living in Ma’ale Adumim. He was born in 1946 in Tashkent and immigrated to Israel in 1990 with his wife, the famous writer Dina Rubina. Karafelov engages in figurative painting, whose touch slightly reminds me of Chagall and even of Fauvist art. He also deals with religious topics and has been defined as “one of the masters of contemporary Jewish painting”.
I adore the way in which the light falls on the figures in the painting and the warm embrace it creates between the man and the woman. Karafelov’s female subjects - including his own wife - own a particularly sensual warmth, which they yet seem to struggle to control, evoking such conflicts as spirituality vs. sensuality and expressive freedom vs. self-control. Especially this latter aspect offers an unignorable insight into the (now post-)Soviet background of the painter.

«Ну улыбнись, я хочу поцеловать тебя в улыбку!»
- “Smile for me, I want to kiss you on your smile” Dina Rubina, “When will it snow?”.

09/11/2020

This post is about and her unique artwork. In the art landscape of Munich, I believe it’s safe to say there is nothing quite like what she does. The first image is from the Cave Painting Series she presented in the 2020 yearly exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Munich’s Academy has been playing a key role in European Art since its foundation in 1808, being one of the oldest and most renowned art academies in Germany. Such painters as Vassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Giorgio De Chirico studied at Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.
I got to know Nata’s artwork on Instagram and through the website of the Art Academy and was immediately struck by the materials she uses and the Russian echoes which came to my mind when looking at her art. In fact, for the Cave Painting Series, Nata worked with oil painting on cartonage, thus giving a waste-like object a whole new life and endowing it with an original significance. I have been spending quite some time in Russia and in Russian-speaking contexts, since I am working on my PhD thesis on Russian-speaking migration in Israel and Germany. The kitschy flower decoration and cut of the cartonage immediately reminded me of typical Soviet home interiors, with poor quality wallpaper hanging in living rooms where a lot of tea is drunk and existential conversations are held between friends and family members. The same kind of nostalgic atmosphere is present in Nata’s exhibition “Zimmer frei” at in Munich (see last picture, courtesy of ). Nata makes a clever use of prosaic, daily-usage materials by conveying them a new meaning or re-placing (or rather displacing!) them in unusual contexts. Pictures 2 and 3 show the drawing work she makes on supermarket receipts, thus transforming a seemingly useless and ephemeral waste-like object into something to attentively look at. I’m planning an interview with Nata to talk with her about her exciting artwork and her connection to Russia. I love the fact that Munich, which so many people believe to be a boring, conformist and conservative city, is actually so vibrating and has a very exciting art scene. Can’t wait to discover more! @ Akademie der Bildenden Künste München

All the images are courtesy of Nata Togliatti's instagram profile https://www.instagram.com/natatogliatti/

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