Ivo Alvarone WINTER LANDSCAPES ink on paper drawings

The WINTER LANDSCAPE is a series of ink on paper drawings. A world of winter landscape. Plants that are not plants, fields that are not gardens. Full of abstract details, precisely drawn with a dry brush. Drawn with precision, as calligraphers write letters – each character, each line is consciously marked on the paper. An imaginary, unreal enchanted landscape. The whole series of ink on paper drawings is a sketchbook created by the artist. Full of plastic spaces, which, although drawn with black lines on a white background, create a rug of colorful, lush ornaments.

The artist consciously gave his black and white ink on paper drawings a sketch character. Alvarone plants resemble real landscapes, but are not real fields. It is a series of drawings suspended in imagination, in irrationality that is in contradiction with experience. A series allows us to relate to an unreal reality.

It is also a perverse look at the world of plants, which, although we recognize the richness of its forms, we perceive as generally beautiful, not paying attention to details. The trees and snow in the world of Alvarone do not reproduce the natural world, but create new species. Alvarone in his ink on paper drawings pays attention to our perception of nature. We do not admire its forms, individual plants, we generalize our view, while each form is a microcosm of beauty, a microcosm of a rich palette of shapes and forms. Alvarone urges us to stop and admire a blade of grass, the fanciful shape of a tree, and an unusual color of the sky. In detail, and not for a moment, but for a while.

Alvarone’s ink on paper drawings are an appeal to pay attention to what is around us. Let’s take a look at how the Japanese admire cherry blossoms. Sakura Hanami, the festival of cherry blossoms, is one of the most important events in Japanese culture. Sakura Hanami time is for the Japanese a period of exceptional beauty and a special atmosphere. It is a holiday that is associated with joy, the fleeting moment and satisfaction with life. The traditional Japanese custom of admiring the beauty of flowers also has a wider meaning. The delicate, fragile, short-lived beauty of flowers is seen as a metaphor for life itself.

Ivo Alvarone is a color painter. He loves intense, bright colors, and plays with their combinations and variety of forms. It contrasts and weaves them into charming and unpretentiously intense, unique ranges. Because nature is very rich and very colorful. In black and white ink on paper drawings, The WINTER LANDSCAPES, Alvarone translated his approach to color into drawing. The artist urges us to open the gates to imagination, to translate a monochrome drawing into a sensual world of colors.