Statement

“Dora approaches the Feminine, allowing it to express itself, allowing it to flow.
She creates a space of transparency, in which her shapes can manifest their multidimensionality.
It is a lively interplay of freedom and pain, in which her figures flow, tempted to run away and become something else, something new.
Her work is a wonderful recreation of life. Her women are born again and again, with the unique purpose of finding their essence.”

Judith Merenfeld-Moscu, PhD.
Jungian Psychoanalyst.

Statement

DORA ABBO WHITE SERIES PAINTINGS

Dora Abbo approaches painting with the highest aesthetic sense. Her monochromatic white canvases display a profuse ensemble of black outlines intermingled with curvilinear shapes. Penciling, crayoning and long brushes are the core tools for Abbo’s creation. Some hints of colored contours produce surprises and dynamism into the figurative forms. A cinematic movement is created through the juxtaposing of different lines; some of them less marked and faded, a nod to Rembrandt's pentimento. This is Abbo's signature, her way of defining "drawing" into painting, her love of lines and their aliveness. The uncolored background is pointed as a white field of pure light. Not using pictorial color is an artistic choice to present an intangible life-level away from the physical world. The works display an ethereal sphere with a strong mystical awareness. The artist has a sharp spiritual sense in projecting her vivid scenes. Her silhouettes delineate a magical realm in which women trespass through life’s processes. The energetic figures shift and swing in theatrical movements as if in existential passages. Abbo significantly reveals women’s’ meaningful states.

Milagros Bello, Ph.D
Curator

The White Series

In my Whites Series I work with the absence of color. In this stage of my trajectory as an artist, color disappears giving way to the power of the outlines and dynamic character of the composition. The disappearance of color gives way to a new essence of the work and the hidden story of the figures. The viewer can perceive the emotions of the physical and psychic spaces stopped in an instant of thought; they are human entities representing an instant of past and present experiences and memories. I work with both the fantasies and realities of life. Each figure weaves and interacts with the others in a constant dialogue, moving and dancing on the canvas fragmenting its form. It is a process that emanates from the unconscious mind, leading to a synthesis of lines and the purity of drawing over the white canvas, which gives way to a luminous void that frees the figures to express themselves at a higher level. The absence of color drives the figures to their maximum expressive potential in a mystic way where

"The light silences what we do not wish to see."

Dora Abbo

Light and Color

The evolution of my paintings through the years has brought me to a moment and place in which my main purpose is opening my expressive language and inner search to the complexities of the introspective dialogue of the human being and women’s place in the world.
Spectator and painting engage in a dialogue leading deep into the place of silence in which an explosion of line and color are born, in a mystic language of both present and past, fantasy and reality, defying the rationality of the canvas with an intense light blinding what we don’t want to see.

"Color and light join momentarily, opening a space in which our self is free."

Dora Abbo

Resume

RESIDES

1949-1959: San Jose, Costa Rica.
1959-1980: Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Current Miami, Florida

EDUCATION

1973-77 School of Fine Arts Julio Arraga. Maracaibo,Venezuela.
1980-84 School of Fine Arts Florida Atlantic University. Florida.

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2014           Curator’s Voice Art Projects. Miami, Florida.
2013           Curator’s Voice Art Projects. Miami, Florida.
2013           Art Basel. Red Dot. Miami Florida.
2012           Art Basel. Red Dot. Miami,Florida.
2012           Curator’s Voice Art Projects. Miami, Florida.
2011           Art Basel. Red Dot. Miami, Florida.

1994           Art Miami ’94 The Embassy Gallery. Miami, Florida.
1993           New England Fine Arts. Juried Exhibition. Boston, Massachusetts.
1990           Museum of Fort Lauderdale, Juried Exhibition. 32nd. Hort Memorial Fort Lauderdale,                 Florida.
1990          Minotauro Art Gallery. Convergencias. Caracas, Venezuela.
1990          Thomas Center Gallery. Hispanic Artists. Gainesville, Florida.
1990          Du Dragon Art Gallery. Grands Et Jeunes D’aujourd’ Hui. Grand Palais. Paris, France.
1989          Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.
1988          XI Annual Art Salon Bijoux. Caracas, Venezuela.
1988          Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.
1988          Du Dragon Art Gallery. Grands Et Jeunes D’aujourd’ Hui. Grand Palais. Paris, France.
1988          Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.

1987 Gallery 700. Maracaibo, Venezuela.

1987          Du Dragon Art Gallery. Grands Et Jeunes D’aujourd’ Hui. Grand Palais. Paris, France.
1987.         Ralli Museum. (Placed in permanent collection.) Uruguay.
1986          Du Dragon Art Gallery. Grands Et Jeunes D’aujourd’ Hui. Gran Palais. Paris, France.
1986          Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.
1985          Gilles Patric Gallery. The seven Sins. Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
1983          Broward Art Guild Gallery.(Juried Exhibition) Fort Lauderdale. Florida. -First Prize.
1983          Ritter Gallery. ( Juried exhibition)Florida Atlantic University. Boca Raton, Florida.
1982.         Broward Art Guild Gallery. (Juried exhibition) Fort Lauderdale.Florida.- First Prize.
1982.         Ritter Gallery.( Juried exhibition) Florida Atlantic University. Boca Raton, Florida.
1981.         Broward Art Guild Gallery.( Juried exhibition) Fort Lauderdale, Florida. – First Prize.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

1990        National Museum of Costa Rica. San Jose, Costa Rica.
1989        Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.
1986.       Minotauro Art Gallery. Caracas, Venezuela.
1985.       Gilles Patric Gallery. Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

COLLECTIONS

San Jose, Costa Rica.
Santiago de Chile.
Bogota, Colombia.
Paris, France.
Panama, Panama.
Rome, Italy.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Punta del Este, Uruguay
USA: IIlinois, New York, Texas, California, Florida.
Venezuela: Maracaibo, Caracas.