Aviva Sawicki

Biography

Aviva Sawicki was born in Santiago in 1956. She studied Art at the Catholic University of Chile, History of Art and History of Theatre at the Jerusalem University, Art and English Literature at the Haifa University and Scenery Design at the Tel-Aviv University in Israel.

For many years she painted with oil on canvas, or on kraft paper when the formats were very big, the main subject was the human figure, which always occupied a central place within her compositions.

After working in the Art Department of the Israeli National “Habima” Theater and at Israfilm in different International Film Productions, she moved to Germany where she worked as a Multimedia Art Director.

Now married and mother of two, she decided to use a new technique. From the practical need to paint in a discontinued form, (with many interruptions!), arose the idea of painting on paper with watercolor, since colors can be used directly from the box and simply diluted with water. Fast and clean.

Without pretentions, and “inspired” by domestic work, like picking up wooden toys scattered on the ground, she started to use this as patterns: houses, trees, animals and people, slowly building small towns acclimated with designs of very intense colors. These primary elements ordered on paper formed a tribal life with the basic elements of human subsistence. Room was refugee, flora, decoration, fauna, nutritional basis, small human beings who participate carrying tiny elements in their arms, or merely standing as an infinite human chain, society. A new language was born, which then developed intoan ethnic subject, a reaction to the xenophobia that arose after the unification between Eastern and Western Germany during the nineties. Her idea was to question the true values of western civilization.

Focusing on recycled paper was later, after returning back to Chile, she felt the need to use a freer material with less rigid contours, which provided also a richer base of texture. Her idea was to incorporate different elements (like flower petals, metal ribbons and fabrics) in the elaboration of her paper, as she transformed her work into an unconventional form of painting by using these elements as an inherent part of each composition.

She returned to using the human figure as a central subject in her work, while still dealing with her personal view of mankind.

Today she is working with colored recycled plastic bags, without paint, developing unique and original techniques. Her works are often abstract, but many of them do produce obvious representations of her reality.

Aviva’s art has been exhibited in Israel, Germany, the United States and Chile, sold and shipped to art collectors all around the world.