A POET, SINGER AND ARTIST

“I met Annette in the early 60s. I then had an art gallery in Milan and her parents frequently appeared at my openings with her.

At the age of seven she started studying music and soon was appreciated as an enfant prodige. A born polyglot, gifted with a high and melodious voice, Annette sings fluently in eight languages and has performed in many international music festivals. She has thus appeared – amongst other equally important venues – at the London Wigmore Hall; in Paris at the Salle Gaveau; and at the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York.

Her artistic education was no less thorough. She started studying graphic design in l’École des Arts Décoratifs in Geneva and in 1957, in New York, she perfected her practice at the Parsons School of Design. Here she had a Bauhaus training in art history, life drawing, painting, photography and sculpture. She then joined the Art Students League in New York. Upon her return to her native Brazil she took private lessons in painting with Juan Pons – the famous Spanish painter. Annette has exhibited in various solo and group shows in Paris, London, New York, Sao Paulo and Tel Aviv.

Notwithstanding her having been trained as a painter, her first art works were collages. Here she evidences her own distinctively personal approach and is as far from Schwitters and the Dadaist works as from the current contemporary collages. Annette blends harmoniously different figurative elements to reveal a poetic and visionary world that leaves to the onlooker the flavour of a renewed discovery.

Her painting is no less innovative and striking. In a false naïve introspective stile she perfectly well describes the psychological traits of her personages. For instance in one of her black felt pen and collage of 2013, Lady in a Blue Hat, a dandy is seen wearing on his jacket a shy naked woman; in another, Sunday Afternoon – that may be an imaginary self-portrait – the young girl, with a veil-like-shaped huge hat (an invitation to an unending voyage) is wearing a flowery blouse and pants. In still another, Pre Raphaelite Souvenir, the personage – the shy young woman is wearing again a flowery dress and appears next to two, more mature and thoughtful equally idealized personages, that may stand for her own father and mother.”

Arturo Schwarz
Milan, December 2013

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Arturo Schwartz carried on a long-time friendship and correspondence with pioneering Surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp. Schwartz is known as an art historian, lecturer, art consultant and curator of international art exhibitions. His art collection includes more than 700 works by such Surrealist artists as Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Jean Arp. The works include paintings, sculptures, objects, drawings, prints, collages and photographs by more than 200 artists.

Born in Alexandria, he moved to Milan in 1949, where he established a bookstore and later an art gallery, known as the Galleria Schwartz.