In little more than a decade, Farideh has developed from being the wife of a gallery-owner who paints into an artist of major accomplishment and, in her own way, into the most interesting and accomplished flower painter in the country. Her current show contains at least four works that are quite breathtaking in both in treatment and color.
The artist works in oils and oil washes on top-quality paper combining multi paneled “views” of the real world with those of her imagination. In earlier works, she contrasted in oriental Dufyism with minimalist fiends; and more recently tackled the difficult task of achieving illusions of depth of foliage, several of which are also on view here.
All this experience alas now been distilled and refined into panels (rectangles of over-layed color) that are reduced to a diptych, with the flowers and foliage being brought forward onto the picture plane and treated as a field. As with many Ticho landscapes, the details aren’t delineated at all, only suggested, in a modernist form of impressionism. In each diptych: the deductive coin- positions are twinned with panels of a purely abstract nature, two of them overly indebted to Jackson Pollock, but so deftly handled and winningly designed as to be acceptable.
The technical control finally achieved, both in oil wash and white industrial enamel, with interesting and subtle use of sgraffiti. is impeccable; there isn’t the slightest trace of muddle. The muted colour is subtle and yet equally clean. There are passages that invite favorable comparison with Monet and there are convincing but not derivative echoes of Van Gogh. Bravo. (Gallery Gimel, 4 Shushan str. Jerusalem).
The Jerusalem Post Magazine, May 3, 1991
( Meir Ronnen: Painter and Art Critic, born 1926 Melbourne Australia. Since 1949 Art Critic of Jerusalem Post, also Art Editor of Paper. Education: High School for Art and Technology Melbourne, Art Faculty Advanced Studies, Japan. From: Information Center for Israeli Art )
