Critical Analysis

Almost no artist begins painting with a style which is definitely figurative or abstract; it is rather a choice, sometimes painful and full of uncertainties and of the many experiences done and denied. This is not true for Waltraud Caroline Keyn: her artistic choice, that is a clear tendency for what is informal, is evident in her artistic path when we consider her naturalistic work, such as the beautiful watercolours whose subject is the landscape. In these watercolours we are impressed by the subtle twisting of the reality through which we can see another intention, that is her will to transfer the vision from its appearance to its essence. The consequence is that this vision shifts to a parallel world and here it creates a fantastic dimension, as if there is an suspension of time.

Starting from this analysis we can really understand the meaning of the real and proper artistic vocation of Keyn, that is the abstraction as a means of freedom not only artistic but also, and above all, human as she experienced the tragedy of a Germany divided and torn into two states.

Keyn's abstraction is the consequence of some patient work deriving from a concentrated meditation whose aim is to eliminate the random drawing and to create a determinism of the message. Such message is conveyed through a controlled and balanced use of the colours and it's possible to understand if we analyse it together with the movement in the painting. Colours and movement are essential for the decoding of the symbols which are instruments of understanding of the deep nature of this artistic experience: a rare or maybe unique example of ideologic abstractism.

Guessing completely Waltraud Caroline Keyn's intentions is very difficult as her art, in spite of the brightness of the chromatic composition, is not playful but it deals with human condition, it is no game, it's tragedy. It's the tragedy of the desolation of an age which, after ascertaining God's and Marx death, seems hopeless and without future. But those who will, even if with difficulty, understand that the art of this great artist is both the vision and the synthesis of our time could take comfort at the source of beauty, as a disciple of Georg Friedrich Hegel's aesthetic, who claimed that not in philosophy and not in religion but in the art lies the ultimate human dignity.

Professor Dr. Aldo Maria Pero, Italy