ANGELO EVELYN,  COMBINATIONS
  

 What impact has the biography of an artist on the outcome of his art? For anyone confronting the oeuvre of Angelo Evelyn, it is indeed a question that can be seriously posed. As a central problem of art criticism, it has always been answered in different ways depending on the tastes of the viewer.

This is not simply because this native Canadian of Anglo-Italian descent has been living for various periods of time in Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Norway and the Netherlands. Telling us, occasionally, the local origin of some of his works when we expect in fact only such details as title, size, and technique used. It is not even because a conversation with the artist, born in 1942, presupposes being at home in many languages. 

If one decides to look for biographical influences in Angelo Evelyn’s works, then this quest is justified in the form of stylistic criticism. The biography (or thus, life??) plays a key role in the final analysis in the content, the iconography and in the pure formal elementary aspects and is clearly evident in his artistic interaction.

Since the beginnings of his artistic career in the late 70’s when he took up his studies at the art academy in Bremen in printmaking and painting, Angelo Evelyn has never restricted himself to a single technique nor an approach. On the contrary, his entire oeuvre resembles somewhat a collage; stylistically and in terms of the material used, its mixed media character is clearly apparent.

Paintings done in oil and acrylic, drawings in pencil, ink and charcoal, the repeated use of stencils, the montage of his own subjects or subjects from other sources: They all mark and characterize his development just as much as his use of different printmaking techniques, especially in the 
framework of lithography. Similarly diverse is his choice of subjects, occasionally single portraits, but also presentations of abstract animal forms or their interpretation showing a close affinity to the natural sciences. In 1998, the artist dedicated a number of graphic works to his parents. They were done in mixed printmaking techniques on paper using photographs as their point of departure.

About eight years earlier, during a lengthy stay in Norway, originated various studies of the whale as subject. Due to an emotional, introspective turn of the artist, this theme was later substituted by images of worms and other terrestrial beasts. 

At the beginning of his art education one discovers the pig as subject. Incorporated into an expressive painting, there is evidence of an affinity to the manner of Francis Bacon. In later works, however, the silhouettes of (stencilled) camels and sheep point to the iconography of pop art.

As themes in some lithographic prints from 2001 Evelyn discovered the pictorial qualities of single quartz and calcite crystals and their inherent regular (geometric) shapes and play with refracted light.

The only continuous and thus recognizable aesthetic characteristic of Evelyn’s oeuvre is the coexistence of diverse spatial levels (in other words, degrees of figuration and temporality in the same work of art).

Some examples such as “The Transformation of the 4 Elements” (1982) and “ Animal Crackers or Dr. Livingstone I Presume” done in the same year come alive through the layering of diverse themes (motives) and narrations tied together with mixed media techniques incorporating painting, drawing and lithographic printing.

Transformation of the Four Elements

In a certain sense, Evelyn’s works appear as a representation of complex connections and not as the depiction of single motifs or themes.

The starting point for this play with multiple layering (or strata) is surely due to Evelyn’s pre-artistic education. Again and again, texts on the artist note that he completed his studies in mathematics and physics and worked in various technical fields before he turned to art.

The fact that his oeuvre developed through a process of adding idea to idea and layer onto layer was observed by other critics, as well. Thus, his former teacher, Karl- Heinz Greune in Bremen, in 1983 recognized “the developmental thrusts that took the form of over-painting.”  It is an aspect that remains typical of Evelyn for a long time now. In fact it follows that the hypothesis of a coloured gesture is immediately replaced by the counter-hypothesis of a linear form or an assumed or incompletely present figuration. Over and over again, there appear text fragments or individual words on the surface of paintings, not so much as a description or explanation but rather as independent iconographic elements.

The purpose for all the various assertions occurring in a given picture is by no means to come to a final, clear and unequivocal conclusion as to the ultimate meaning of such a work. Evelyn leaves that trace of openness and sometimes enigma to his works which is a prerequisite for a continuous confrontation with them.

However, in the final analysis it is obvious that hinting at the formulas and structures of certain sciences perhaps omits a more significant if not the most significant nucleus of Evelyn’s art. Despite a tendency of reduction (and, in fact, simplification of the use of art materials) that has become more and more visible over the years, and notwithstanding an increasing concentration on one-dimensional offensive statements (or strategies)  that address the observer emotionally and or intellectually, it is still the experience, emotion and awe of the artist confronted with life and its testimonies which takes preference among all the possible points of departure. 

  Bears

The series “Keys to Global Warming” from 1998 is for instance based on images of weather maps taken from newspapers and combined with the silhouette of a key. Similarly, the series “Bears, Bulbs, Brains, Backbones, and Borders,” completed two years later and done on the basis of a re-worked map of Europe dissected into 16 parts, clearly reflect Evelyn’s physics and natural history background but also his expressive freedom as an artist. The same is true of three woodcut and lithography prints, “The lungs of the Earth I, II, III ,“ which owe their statement to the connecting of chestnut leaves with a view of a lung as suggested from an X-ray image. On closer scrutiny, the partly legible written text that has been integrated into the works appears as a formula for photosynthesis. In this way, Evelyn once again unites in his works factual objectivity and the fascination with processes normally studied in the context of the natural science.

 Lungs of the Earth III

A generous field for such an emotional confrontation is also apparent in the landscape motifs which have been part of Evelyn’s works over the years. Some early example of these can be found in such major paintings already done in 1982  as “Kriegs Mythos” and “Zen Taurus”,
tachist and expressive works imbued with landscape motives by way of which Evelyn was beginning to consolidate his personal artistic point of view.

The stylistic closeness to Francis Bacon and the thematic research of the figure and space which were typical of him at the time of his studies at the art school in Bremen in 1979 and 1980, have been left behind now. Henceforth it is the landscape subject which in 1983 drew attention by way of integrated postcard images as in “Dutch Tulip Landscape or Alternative Energy” or in “Deja-Vue or Why Wait for Spring Do it Now.” They also formed variations of fantasy-filled areas full of camels and sheep as in “Desert Landscape” and “Umbrian landscape".

In 1985 Evelyn dedicated himself to the “Canadian Island,” as a theme
which for biographical reasons, in varied form through the years, remained important. Already in the same year the image appears in copied and over-painted form four times in “All the four Seasons” or in “Two Views of a Canadian Island”.

Two Views of A Canadian Island

Determined by his stay in Norway in 1988, Evelyn assessed the depth of the “North-Sea Landscape”  in a series of large-scale works in which his perspective changes occasionally from the accustomed horizontal to a birds–eye view. Mirror-like inversions of elements within a work, as well as a calligraphic use of iconographic language underscore the narrative qualities of these works. We encounter them again in 1997 in the lithography and woodcut, “A View from Lord Elgin’s Pathfinder”. Once again, Evelyn changes his point of view and develops a fictitious perspective of the Martian surface, which we perceive as a red landscape with a large number of rocks strewn across it. 

Seemingly like a kind of horizon, in front of which the diverse themes of his works are enacted, the landscape - in the form of a quotation or visual motif - forms the tie that holds together the iconographic cosmos of Angelo Evelyn.

The recurrence of such landscape-like spatial formations is, in terms of stylistic criticism, the connection between almost all of his works. As if the artist was in this way integrating his ideas and questions into a natural environment, in order to point to their general validity and relevance. (We see that they relate in many ways to the present, while being dominated by an awareness of personal responsibility; they are in fact interpretable as social criticism.)

What does a traveller do when he arrives in a foreign place? He perceives it in the first place as a geographical landscape. William Turner demonstrated this masterfully. Only after some time has relapsed, the theatre of nature is replaced by the complexity of the landscape as an ambience of humans and animals. 

The term  “Kulturlandschaft” (cultural landscape) takes on an entirely new dimension. Thus “landscape” does not merely mean the horizontal glance on things from the outside. The works of Angelo Evelyn are rather to be understood as reflections of his inner landscape, as mirrors of a traveller whose “place of home appears in the plural” (Greune).

If one is to consider the consistency in Angelo  Evelyn’s artistic engagement one cannot help but to reflect on his printmaking. Evelyn has learned graphic printmaking techniques, he has studied them. He has become a master. Their skilled use in almost all phases of his oeuvre determines the latter and applies its stamp to it (sic!). The quality of his graphic work is considerable. They posses a high degree of autonomy as is apparent in the case of the etching “The BM celebrates the Millennium” (1997), as well as the lithography “Drie Madonnen” (2001). Angelo Evelyn’s artistic prints are not only supports for the duplication of interesting motifs, but serve at times in much larger compositions. Still, there is sometimes a certain static quality apparent to them. Thus the prints from the series “Calcite” from 2001, leave in their attractiveness an almost monolithic impression on the viewer.

    The BM Celebrates the Millenium

Drie Madonnen
 

  Calcite

In spite of this, the immediacy of the moment fails in them which the paintings otherwise give rise to (as the presence or awareness of a situation in the artist). The graphic media are first of all a means of transition (and transmission) whose technical requirements often have a constraining effect on the execution of a work. 

As a consequence of this, in the last two or three years there is a tendency which can be felt, of the artist moving away from printmaking and turning back to painting and drawing. While withdrawing from what perhaps is for him the most technological among the artistic possibilities in his repertoire, Evelyn escapes the verdict of precision in favour of a more spontaneous means of expression. The works regain a greater freedom and ease.

The most recent landscapes, among them once more a return to the sujet of Canadian islands, come across as more open, freer; they incorporate larger spatial relationships, without the necessity for action or figuration in the intermediate stage of their formulation.

Memories  of Norwegian stave churches offered the pretext, in 2002, for the painting “Norwegian Stave Church Landscape,” a work which just as “Saltspring Island” shows obvious tendencies towards abstraction.

Consistently, since 2002 have originated numerous works, of which “A Question of Containment I” and “II” are examples which have freed themselves nearly completely of figurative elements.
This form of abstraction is a result of Evelyn’s development which has lead the artist from graphic works via painting to prints and their combinations. We get the impression somehow that Angelo Evelyn is now exploring painting with regard to its true possibilities, as printmaking can no longer tell him anything new. 

But, to come back to it,  what is our conclusion with regard to the influence of an artist’s biography on the outcome of his art? In the case of Angelo Evelyn, the answer could be: If by ‘biography’  we mean not simply his social development and professional career but all the places where he has lived, all the questions posed, the persons loved, the landscapes seen and experienced, the answers obtained, the illnesses overcome, and the works completed, then indeed the biography and the oeuvre can be seen as mutually pervading each other in the form of a ‘set’ of ‘solutions on offer.’ As Angelo Evelyn proves, this ‘set’ is almost inexhaustible. 

Translated by AW
© for the original German text (and translation rights) by Dr. Christian Krausch, art historian, Moenchen-Gladbach