AMSTELVEEN – Out of eight finalists, Lita Cabellut has been chosen as Artist of the Year 2021. Museum JAN showed a retrospective of the Spanish artist Lita Cabellut from 17 October 2018 to 27 January 2019. RTVA interviewed the artist just before the opening of this exhibition.
Over the years, Cabellut developed a unique technique in which she paints grand portraits and combines traditional fresco techniques with the use of oil paint, breaking the layer of paint on these imposing works to create a new image through the combination of chance and power. With this Cabellut wants to let go of what we can recognize and control.
“As if you can break time with your own hands.” The resulting image has emerged freely and has acquired a new essence.
Lita Cabellut was born in 1961 in Huesca, Sariñena, where she lived on the streets until she was adopted by a prominent family at the age of 12. She was taken to museums such as the Prado in Madrid where she came into contact with the old masters. The young Cabellut was inspired by paintings by Velázquez, Goya and Frans Hals and the many frescoes in her hometown.
After her education, Cabellut had her first exhibition in the town hall of Masnou, Barçelona. Two years later – at the age of 19 – she left Spain to study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in the Netherlands, where she still lives and works.
Cabellut’s work – who sees himself as a storyteller – is exhibited all over the world. She previously had museum exhibitions in Seoul, Seattle, Mumbai, Delhi, Tokyo, Berlin and in Het Noord-Brabants Museum in Den Bosch.
Lita Cabellut is currently a member of the jury for the NTR program Project Rembrandt. In this talent show broadcast on NPO 1 on Sunday evening, the best Dutch amateur painter is sought.
Amstelveen-born landscape photographer Saskia Boelsums is Artist of the Year 2020.
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