The studio of Jasminka Banušić

Jasminka Banušić has dived into her painterly drama bravely, without prejudice or calculation, and — with the strong gestures of her sensibility — swims with surprising skill through the scenography of her own imagined space. Here we see pure colour speaking directly, a clear and vehement stroke of the brush, a modern reading of the first idea, and an inventive arrangement.

Her variations arise from the search for a colour that will best answer the colour already laid down. The playful combinatorics of her palette, anchored on a single dominant tone, form the architecture of compositions that lean toward the fascination of a "new realism" — a reduction to essential form, clarity of drawing, clarity of composition, and above all a brightness of colour carried by strong contrasts and a vibrant rhythm.

If we were to look for a memory in these painterly sonatas, we would find it in the world of Fauvism — the movement whose forefather, the French painter Henri Matisse, freed colour from the colour seen in nature and set his own laws of free choice. Banušić, in much the same way, lays down her own laws in the choosing of colour and the treatment of composition, and so has made her own expression and her own law within her own world of vivid colour. She finds herself more at ease on larger surfaces; they do not constrain her sanguine temperament or her first idea.

She inclines, in her paintings, toward the second of the two intentions that Henry Moore once described — not the beauty of expression but the strength of expression: the spiritual vitality that, in his words, "is more exciting and goes deeper into the senses". That is her particular quality.

The paintings of Jasminka Banušić seem to lead a life of their own. Each one tells us a story, and asks for attention — asks to be looked at and read in the way only the viewer can, with the symbols closest to us.

These recent works are full of colour. Through the synergy of plane and line the painter describes her inner world: her thinking, her doubts, her hopes, her wishes. Art is her need and her passion. Although the paintings are abstract, without clear iconography, Jasminka sends us messages that are easily read through the strong and expressive medium of colour, which she handles with sovereign command — as Paul Klee said, "Art stands above things, above the real, as above the imaginary; from the object it makes an unconscious play."

The world of Jasminka Banušić is rich in painterly elements; it bursts with the inexhaustible energy of cosmic forces that seem to guide her hand, shifting the borders between worlds — the invisible becomes visible, and the reverse. The works she creates are original and engaging through and through. With the spontaneity of a child she lets the work go where it must — always new, always unrepeatable.