At the beginning of the eighties there was a world movement in favor of a revalorization of painting and of its return to its traditional supports – canvas and carton – clearly discarding the propositions that had prevalied in the previous decades, when there had been na exhaustive search, by the artists, for unconventional means of manifestation . This coming-back of the supports brings back, also, not only a style but a particular way of looking at art: the expressionism, now catalogued as neo-expressionism, or savage expressionism in Germany, which has revived it, and as trans-vanguard by italian artists. From Europe the tendency spread out and was reactivated by those who instinctively had already adapted it as the language of present times. Comparisons between societies are pertinent and inevitable, as well as the conflicts which have given birth to this tendency and permitted its resurgence. Times go round and a cycle of art has closed up. The ample retaking of figuration and of expressive confrontation superimposed itself upon formal investigation, which had been reigning since the fifties as the language par excellence.

Man becomes again the center of the artist’s attention.

Following the general pessimism characteristic of the end of a century, Regina makes a caustic commentary on the human comedy. Quests about the meaning of life, of poverty, pain, and, paradoxically, happiness in the midst of disgrace are spread out in her canvas. The priority of emotion over the structural formality of the picture, and the intensive search for expression, together with her involvement with a reality that is turned into a painting, align her with the neo-expressionist current.

Parting from a visible reality she paints individualites, although she does not take it as an immediate model. She portrays the essence of life as she has seen it in a given moment, demonstrating her involvent with humanity, which is not merely the reflex of a state of mind but a direct contact with her fellow creatures. Symbol and expression of what is human.

The background of the pictures is empty, serving as an ideal scenery for the pantomime of same time painful smile in those expressive faces. A figuration that celebrates what is considered hideous beside the beautful – mere formal concepts – in urban and contemporaneous themes. These semi-human, semi-montruous beings express, in their exhuberant humanity, a spiritual suffering codified in concret terms: they are a form of denouncing the disaffection that hits them directly. "I paint what I love", and with this affirmative Regina assumes that the humanity is what motivates her. She does not paint only what she sees, nor only what she feels, but what lives in her soul.

The manner of using the brush is agile, the paint is flexible and fluid, covering nervousily the surface of the canvas with transitions that take agile and lively forms. The palette has been reduced to a few tones, and the luminsity of the colors is enhanced, the details being despised on behalf of the whole. To Regina, the world is definitely not a poetical motto, but something that converts itself into a tragic (in fact ironic) comedy.

A painting is not simply the expression of a theme or idea, but a represetation. It is not only a direct expression of a sense, but in fact for the sense of the theme.

Regina is, undoubtedly, very brave.

 

MARIA DO CARMO ARANTES – Critic of Art

Member of the "Brasilian Association of Critics of Art" and of the

"International Association of Critics of Art"