DOI issue:
No. 315
DOI article:Manson, James Bolivar: The drawings of Pamela Bianco
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21358#0038
THE DRAWINGS OF PAMELA BIANCO
It is as though Pamela Bianco were the
mouthpiece of a divine spirit; as though,
through her, a spirit fresh and sweet as a
south wind over a field of violets finds
concrete expression. The drawings here
shown do not pretend to give an adequate
idea of her infinite variety or even of her
essential quality. Space would not permit
the realization of that, and at the time
these reproductions had to be made much
of her best work had not arrived in this
THE LITTLE MOTHER ’
PEN DRAWING BY
PAMELA BIANCO
country; but those who have had the
privilege of seeing the recent exhibition
at the Leicester Galleries can testify,
among other things, to the wonderful
combination of mature and masterly tech-
nique with conceptions as sweet and
innocent as child nature, 000
Perfect art is pure intuition from which
what we are pleased to call technique is
inseparable, being indeed but the expres-
sion of the impression. In these days its
manifestations are so rare that the nature
of art is little understood nor its appearance
always recognized, 0000
Less gifted artists spend years in learn-
ing to draw and paint. They painfully
acquire a means of expressing what is in
them, and finally they are left with an
elaborate means of expression and nothing
whatever to express ; hence the art which
fills our various Royal Societies and
academies—ingeniously contrived methods
of using paint to produce carefully evolved
trivialities. This was not the case with
Pamela Bianco any more than it has been
with any true artist, any more than it was
with the unknown primitive man who
painted the unexcelled Bison on the walls
of the caves in the Dordogne in those
days when schools of painting were,
happily, undreamt of. No! Pure art is
essentially the expression of feeling; it
grows and is born, none knows how, like
the unfolding of a flower. Its birth is
always a miracle, and it is neither less nor
more so when it occurs in a young child.
22
It is as though Pamela Bianco were the
mouthpiece of a divine spirit; as though,
through her, a spirit fresh and sweet as a
south wind over a field of violets finds
concrete expression. The drawings here
shown do not pretend to give an adequate
idea of her infinite variety or even of her
essential quality. Space would not permit
the realization of that, and at the time
these reproductions had to be made much
of her best work had not arrived in this
THE LITTLE MOTHER ’
PEN DRAWING BY
PAMELA BIANCO
country; but those who have had the
privilege of seeing the recent exhibition
at the Leicester Galleries can testify,
among other things, to the wonderful
combination of mature and masterly tech-
nique with conceptions as sweet and
innocent as child nature, 000
Perfect art is pure intuition from which
what we are pleased to call technique is
inseparable, being indeed but the expres-
sion of the impression. In these days its
manifestations are so rare that the nature
of art is little understood nor its appearance
always recognized, 0000
Less gifted artists spend years in learn-
ing to draw and paint. They painfully
acquire a means of expressing what is in
them, and finally they are left with an
elaborate means of expression and nothing
whatever to express ; hence the art which
fills our various Royal Societies and
academies—ingeniously contrived methods
of using paint to produce carefully evolved
trivialities. This was not the case with
Pamela Bianco any more than it has been
with any true artist, any more than it was
with the unknown primitive man who
painted the unexcelled Bison on the walls
of the caves in the Dordogne in those
days when schools of painting were,
happily, undreamt of. No! Pure art is
essentially the expression of feeling; it
grows and is born, none knows how, like
the unfolding of a flower. Its birth is
always a miracle, and it is neither less nor
more so when it occurs in a young child.
22