The Art of Layla Fanucci

Layla Fanucci’s art is both real and imaginary, composed and intuitive, its content inseparable from the form she has given it. Here, in her first New York exhibition, she offers a range of cityscapes drawn in black silhouette lines on luminous thinly-coated color fields. Her spaces are built of light and dark, of the transparent and the opaque, and these she ornaments with impressive complexity. This oscillation between line and color, luminosity and impenetrability, is the visual vocabulary for the poetry of meaning in Fanucci’s work. Her love of strong contrast shows as well in her choice of subject here. (The artist lives and works in a small village in the Napa valley, yet loves "the energy, the complexity, and the challenging aspects" of big city life.)

In Layla Fanucci’s painting, line gives us a clarity as well as vitality and spontaneity -- the important graphic quality without which it might be artistic yet not art. Her sketches of the bustling sights of New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome and elsewhere seem to interact with one another, offering the viewer a single great riotous engagement. This intensification is gracefully counter-pointed by washed shades of red, blue, yellow, and green. Her audience is not merely presented with an alert and penetrating panorama, but is enveloped in the life-affirming energy of people and of cultures.

Any good artist is rooted in the history of art in general, and inspired, knowingly or not, by currents within it. Distinctiveness and personal identity are measured by the distance between inspiring forbearers and one’s own work. Layla Fanucci’s art shares some areas of thought with at least two major 20th century artists: Henri Matisse and Henri Rousseau. Intellect and depth of understanding combined with spontaneity and the force of impulse are hallmarks of all three. Their works are direct, strong, and, in a deeper sense, simple. On a formal level as well as, Layla Fanucci’s works are linear, colorful, and fraught with imagination. One is impressed not only by the evolution and quality in Layla Fanucci’s art, but, ultimately, by its singularity.

In a recent conversation, Layla Fanucci spoke of what causes her to make art and what makes it possible for her to create: "[Painting] gives me the energy, life force, happiness . . . I don't feel fear when I paint." Face to face with Layla Fanucci's work we also become energized and positive, feel blessed and grateful, and become, by this declension, more peaceful and content.

Willo Doe
New York City based Art Critic, Essayist and Curator.
Her writings appear in national and international journals.

Summer 2006