Visiting our friends.
This weekend we paid a visit to our artists friends Saad Ali and Monique Bastiaans who live near Valencia. We shared our friendship and talked about art till words came out our ears. Monique explained the finishing touches of her exhibition later this month in Valencia, and Saad showed his sketches for large fresco´s. Contagious and inspiring.
Monique Bastiaans has lived in Spain since 1989 and is moving between different styles of three-dimensional work with the same ease as she is using varied materials. Not only does she produce monumental transparent installations and temporary interventions in the public domain, but also colourful objects of plastic, glass, stone and ceramics. All her work shows an inseparable link between form, colour and material.
Saad Ali’s magical paintings find their origin in Arabic mythology and Iraqi cultural history. Through his education and long stay in Florence, Saad Ali became acquainted with the western style of traditional painting. From these rich sources he forms his own mythical world, in which faith in a joyful future is depicted. He was born in Iraq in1949 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and Perugia.