Eliza Vaneva | Contemporary Artist: Artworks & Biography

After a childhood in Paris, Eliza headed to the Balkans where she rediscovered her Yugoslavian origins. She began her artistic journey at the School of Fine Arts in Skopje, Macedonia, and then returned to the French capital to continue her training. There she discovered the work of Pierre Soulages (twentieth century). The French painter and engraver’s way of working the material through the privileged use of black fascinated her. The colours of William Lakin Turner (English landscape painter, nineteenth and twentieth centuries), the light of Gustav Klimt (Austrian Symbolist painter, nineteenth and twentieth centuries) and the compositions of Serge Poliakoff (French painter, twentieth century ) also weigh in among her influences.\n A graduate of the Paris School of Fine Arts in 2002, the artist became interested in other artistic disciplines such as graphic design, lithography and etching. The latter, a technique based on prints, is particularly captivating for her. She likes to take the principles and apply them to her art. The prints in Eliza’s oil painting leave printed textures, shapes and colours. Her backgrounds are almost translucent thin papers, which create, with the repetition and accumulation of the prints, an effect of transparencies.\n Inspired by her family history and her time in the land of her roots, the painter is passionate about orthodox religious art. This aspect of the Macedonian culture is a common thread in her artistic research. Admiring religious monuments and the spiritual energy they emit, Eliza is influenced by the characteristic icons of Eastern Christianity. The passage of time and the mark it makes on these theological works are at the heart of her material work.