The American painter and leading exponent of abstract expressionism Jackson Pollock said: "Painting is a state of being, each artist paints what he is." An expression that is reaffirmed in the work of Liliana Cortina (1963), a painter, draftsman, and illustrator who from the beginning opted for the art of emotions and feelings where the human body is the protagonist.
“At first my painting was surrealist -she explains, she made reference to the dream world, to the mystical. However, over time I needed other ways of expressing myself and I got to what I am now: a woman out of all conventionalism, an artist who expresses what she feels, just that ”.
Liliana Cortina confesses that her greatest course is to show, from subjective ways, the nature of the human being. That is why her works have a dramatic charge that emanates from the conjunction of bodies, generally female, some amorphous and others beautiful and happy, but always with obvious allusions to the nakedness of souls.
In these nudes, simple and natural, on rather flat backgrounds and under sober environments, the creator describes the sexual, fantastic and perverted, but without morbid hints, erotic provocations or obscene sensuality, “my purpose is to reflect the deepest part of the human being without adornments, or clothes, their true essences, their internal labyrinths and their relationship with the world”.
The artist works the different angles of human existence, with the idea of transmitting feelings and behaviors coming from her own perspective or personal intuition to reveal discourses with great subjectivity, in which the observer identifies messages related to her life experiences.
"I try that my work can be interpreted in different ways -exposes- according to the state of mind, the experiences of the spectator, as well as his power of interpretation and his cognitive universe", a characteristic that gives Liliana Cortina's work richness, plurality and diversity.
With an intensely humanistic vision and a markedly existential style with a philosophical and psychological background, the creator scrutinizes the complex nature of the human being from which joys and sorrows, regrets and joys emerge.
Liliana Cortina confesses to feeling concern for the present and future of Cuban plastic arts, although she recognizes the existence of important figures in the world of visual arts on the Island, she considers that in recent times “contemporary art has been conceptually devalued and technically".
"I have seen so many things that it does not seem to me that behind that misnamed work there is an artist - she continues - little value is being given to the technique that is the true essence of a piece". Cortina understands and assumes in her works the constant evolution and development of life, but without forgetting “to respect certain artistic canons and not fall into the crude”.
This artist -who has about thirty personal and collective exhibitions- assumes the act of creating with total freedom of expression, focused on her personal impressions, which she reflects from rather critical positions as if she were trying to find what is deeper within herself.
During more than 20 years of artistic career, she has consolidated her very personal style, establishing herself in a pictorial language that does not try to emphasize the aesthetic, but rather to represent the most intense and genuine emotions, in unquestionably expressionist, shocking and descriptive. And she does it with ease and lightness.
By: Naimy Herrera Pereira, December 2021