Nydia Lozano Piqueras was born on February 4, 1947, in Alginet, a small town of the Ribera of Valencia. The name Nydia recalls the character created by Bulwer-Lytton in his The Last Days of Pompei when the local priest refused a baptism with a pagan name so that Nydia had to be baptized as Laura. Nydia grew up in the huerta landscape, in which life translates itself in a strong luminous atmosphere and in the bright colors of rice fields and of orange and lemon trees. Everything that her sensitiveness kept accumulating in youth manifested itself in her affection for painting. Nydia Lozano’s first works were landscapes depicting Alginet and the places that her family used to visit in the summertime, places like Torremanzanas in the Sierra de Alcoy; she also painted portraits of her friends and relatives. When her father noticed the intensity of her affection for painting he visited José Espert in order to know his opinion of her drawings. The Alginet master José Espert had inherited the vision of the great Valencian School, just as Romero Ressendi (who was a friend of his) had defined the evolution of Andalusian painting. Espert was impressed with the drawings and invited José Lozano to bring his daughter to his atelier. Nydia spent many hours there watching the master paint and listening to his opinions about painting. She learned much more than a technique; she learned the way to look and to understand; she learned the concept of pictorial synthesis that the 19th century masters had achieved and that in the early 60s, after the deaths of Manuel Benedito and Salvador Tuset (to name two valencian masters, both Sorolla’s disciples) had fallen into oblivion and conscious neglect. Actually, the movement to adopt in Spain the artistic trends developing in the United States and Europe had one of its main points of focus in Valencia with Estampa Popular and later the renowned Equipo Crónica. At that time, finding someone who quoted Sargent, Zorn, Laszló, Pinazo or Sorolla was almost impossible, but Espert had no need to prove to anyone his modernity and through him one came to understand the significance of this new historical movement in all of its various dimensions. In 1965 Nydia Lozano entered the San Carlos Fine Arts School of Valencia, where she met her husband-to-be, the painter Leopoldo Sánchez. The School (now a Faculty of the Polytechnic University) was then located in the ancient Convent of El Carmen. Among their professors were the two great figures of post-war Valencian painting: Genaro Lahuerta and Francisco Lozano, although José Ros or Calatayud, who loved their students as much as painting, figured as more influential teachers. During the years spent at the School, Nydia and Leopoldo came in contact with the avantgarde, then the commanding artistic presence: Equipo Crónica, José Iturralde, Eusebio Sempere, Fernando Zóbel, Gustavo Torner, etc. Their first exhibition was a collective showing with Vicente Silvestre at the Ateneo Mercantil of Valencia in January, 1969. Around that time Nydia won several awards such as the Ciudad de Játiva in 1965, the Caja de Ahorros del Sureste Plastic Arts Biennal Medal in 1968 and, in the same year, the Education and Science Ministery Silver Medal which granted her a stipend in order to paint in Segovia. In 1970 she was awarded a grant in Rome by the Castellblanch Foundation. After finishing their studies in 1971, Nydia Lozano and Leopoldo Sánchez got married, leaving Valencia for Barcelona in 1974. From there they began an exhibiting carreer all over Spain: Madrid (Ingres and Zúccaro galleries, Mellado in San Lorenzo del Escorial and Patto’s in Becerril de la Sierra), Valencia (Benlliure, Puchol and Pizarro), Bilbao (Iris), Barcelona (Segura Viudas) and other Spanish capitals such as Zaragoza, Burgos, Logroño, Albacete or Málaga. While living in Barcelona, Nydia and Leopoldo made numerous travels around Spain which often served as a thematic source for their pictures. They felt especially attracted by the life and the landscapes of the Andalusian province of Cádiz, acquiring a house in the town of Vejer de la Frontera. In the summer of 1991, they settled in Galifa, a small valley in Murcia’s southern coast. From there they continued their work exhibiting in galleries in Spain and abroad: Ambassador Galleries in New York, Adamson-Duvannes Gallery in Los Angeles and Simic-New Renaissance in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California and Addison in Boca Raton, Florida, as well as in the galleries Espace Raub in Brest, Euroarte in Lisbon and Inter Arte in Porto. In Spain they have been invited to participate in several art fairs such as Artexpo (Barcelona), Interarte (Valencia) and Artesantander (Santander). In 1996, together with their friend Philippe Martin, they founded in Murcia La Galería de Arte Convard, filling thereby the need for a gallery devoted to Spanish realist art. NYDIA LOZANO’S ESSENTIAL EXPRESSION Expression is a term used in art quite recklessly. Generally, it seems to mean that art is expressive so long as it departs from what is usually recognizable. When we see in a picture something that we normally can´t see, or, conversely, that we can’t see the picture without that quintessential something, then we say it is expressive. Moreover, one never sees in a picture the things which exist outside of it; and, even less, are these outside things seen in the same way by everyone. In a picture, we see only the actual painting, and this is the best we can get. In fact, art is expressive when what it presents signifies according to that by which is created, when there is a coherence between the intention and the technique of the artist; when this occurs we also say it is beautiful. If this is not the case, then art is more accidental than it is expressive; that there are more ways of communication than spoken and written language is due precisely to the fact that they are not able to express everything. Herein lies the language of pictorial art, the language of expression through painting. Nydia Lozano’s art is bound to her desire to express herself, related to the great importance which visual experience has for her in terms of how it translates itself into the sensations which have molded her personality. These sensations must be given shape in order for them to be known by other people, and it is in the process of translating this sensations into the corporal reality of a painting that her expression is revealed, and this is where art rests. All of the physical aspects of the painting emanate from the raison d’être of her art; they are not mere vehicles in themselves but an expression of her sensations. Her painting is not a statement of a theme in order to discover its pictorial possibilities, as might be said of 19th century naturalism, because for her matter and form are not distinguishable, but rather are blended together in the same way that external and internal experiences are merged in art upon the linen canvas with pigments and oil. Simply stated, her painting is a vital act in which the sheer pleasure of execution plays an essential part. Nydia Lozano’s vision, her hand, the canvas, the oils and the turpentine are the elements of an integrated process (perhaps even a game?) whereby she transforms the dead material of the palette into a new reality created within the interior of her imagination and offered to the world as an act of originality. This creative process seems to bestow on Nydia Lozano the hedonism of a mysitc -directed not at that which is “divine” but, rather, to that which is fully human, indeed humane, in art. Nydia Lozano’s art is not tied to other languages, nor is it to be translated by them. She strives to offer purity in painting as completely as she can using the greatest richness and nuance of complexity, like a fugue in which each counterpoint adds an almost non-apprehensible meaning to the entire whole, and, yet, which rests upon the simplicity of the essential.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:29:33 +0000
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