Naive Art Meets Contemporary Art
After the success of our booth at previous Fresh Paint fairs, GINA Gallery is excited to once again take the visitors of Fresh Paint on a naive journey around the world. Visitors to the fair responded to their first encounter with this genre, which is often considered to be outside the realm of established and conventional art, with admiration and emotional affection. Many of them returned to the gallery following this initial encounter, and have been following the gallery’s activities closely since.
GINA Gallery, regarded as an international institution specializing in the naive genre, presents naive art from 37 countries, with around 200 different artists. This wealth of diversity provides a broad picture of the naive genre and its various expressions, arising from different cultures, traditions, and mentalities, as well as the unique style of each individual artist. Despite this diversity, one can observe the common ground among naive artists working at the farthest corners of the world. A Naive painting is rich in details, colors, human narratives, and an idyllic worldview. On the other hand, customs, costumes, and landscapes are always local to the artist, representing their immediate surroundings with anthropological precision and historical documentation.
Naive artists, who often paint from knowledge rather than direct observation, do so in contrast to academic artists who learn how to observe, study anatomy for artists, understand how the skeleton is structured, how muscles function, what perspective and vanishing points are, what the golden ratio is, and how to build a balanced composition and use color according to color theory. Naive artists are free from all these rules and limitations; they “know” how a person or a flower looks, and do not require realistic precision to convey their message.
The naive artist is interested in telling a story to the viewers. They invite us into their world and the scene they wish to share. To do this, they use their best creative skills and their personal priorities in defining their world. They will present to us the full range of colors that make up their imagination, even if it is cacophonous, and all the necessary angles of perspective, even if it doesn’t make sense for them to exist side by side. Anatomical or realistic precision, when it does not help in conveying their message, is unnecessary, and there is no need to dwell on it when there are so many other details that must be depicted with care.
We are happy to offer the visitors of Fresh Paint this naive worldview, representing artists from Israel, Brazil, Argentina, France, El Salvador, Belgium, and Serbia. This is just a representative sample of the countries from which we can offer works for display at the fair.
