Eleonora Stol (1946-2022) - Restless Heart

Eleonora Stol (1946-2022)
Title: “Restless Heart”
Year: 2021
Technique: Mixed media, gouache, pencil on canvas
Edition: Original
Sheet size: 35 x 35 cm
Frame size: 39.5 x 39.5 cm. Includes new black bakelist.
Condition: Very good

Eleonora Stol (1946–2022) was a Dutch artist (female) best known for her expressive, colorful and emotionally charged paintings and graphic works. She was born in Leiden and studied at the Free Academy in The Hague, and then worked for a long time from Amsterdam. Her artist name was sometimes “La Roja,” referring to her preference for bold colors, with red as a recurring theme in her life and work.
Stol’s work is characterized by vibrant color use, dynamic forms, and an intuitive painting style where passion, love, dance, and dream images play a major role. She often used mixed techniques, including acrylic, oil paint, and pencil, giving her works a rich, textural look that directly appeals to emotion. Her art is described as lively, energetic and full of movement, almost as if the canvases ‘breathe’.
An assessment of her work by Anton Martineau.
From a completely unfettered lifestyle, she draws these images in a quirky language, blending her belief in mystical power with the world around her. Fully faithful to her intuition, a mysterious arabesque vernacular, and every work connected to the inexorable profane, not directly intended as symbols or metaphors, but casually recognizable. Yet in a surreal language, a world turned inside out, upside down and satisfyingly hard to grasp. Many of her paintings are like fragments, remnants of bodies that have nearly been consumed by lust, which in an elegant, fresh composition testify to the erotique of the feast. Moreover they are the cards, the moves, the soul of the tango, which she herself loves to dance. Red is the base color, the direct carrier of passion, with its Baroque, provocative character rendered in an Expressionist style.

Through a renewal on a surrealist basis, dream and confused reality, in which love is central, high heels, hard, fiery and dying, stripped of trivial artistic frills, her work becomes accessible and won’t let you escape. You are swept along in a stream of emotionally charged movement, from which little escape is possible, except perhaps the dream of opium, the angel floating on incense, the louche mask of Madonna, and the pleasure as it is depicted. This form of communication is the sharp counterpoint to a technologically perfect world of talking robots and machines with cold blood, which hunt for speed and purpose.

When exploring her work, take the time to delve into the depths of your soul. With passion and ruthless fighting spirit these works are forged until, after a critical detour, they take their rightful place on the wall. A sanctification in the dance of the satyrs and the song of the sirens, a story from the tarot cards, the sugar-sweet kiss of a Mexican Madonna, the scorched air rising from the razor-sharp heels of a dancing woman... in short, art that is created honestly and from within.
Exhibitions (selection)
• 2015 ARTzaanstad
• 2013 Bell’Italia, Rome Poli d’Arte Inaugurazione, Prof. Luca Filipponi
• 2012 Rome Triomphale, Galleria Bell’Italia
• 2011 Palazzo delle Priioni, Castello 4209 Venezia, Embracing Life with great passion
• 2011 exhibition Circolo Artistico di Venezia aprile / maggio
• 2010 Apothoki Gallery, installation 12m x 12m, painting created in the gallery during the exhibition. Open Ateliers Amsterdam, Hotel Arena
• 2009 Stories of Happiness with curator Marco Antonio Teobaldo Loods 6 Baggage Hall Amsterdam Apothiki Gallery Paros Sweet memories until August 2009