..Cristina Alvarez Magliano

Biography

Cristina Alvarez Magliano is an argentine marquetarian who has recently shown her work both locally and in New York; her last exhibition was held at Aldo de Sousa Art Gallery –a member of the Argentinean Association of Art Galleries in October of 2002. Alvarez Magliano has for years devoted her free time to her garden, which she tends to in La Reja, Moreno, an area neighboring the capital city of Buenos Aires. Though originally a painter, Alvarez discovered the technique known as wood inlaying, or marquetry, in the 90’s; a method of “painting with wood” which can be traced to Renaissance artists working throughout Europe and the Middle East. Alvarez Magliano began to explore this non-traditional art medium to more closely relate her experience in her garden with the images in her art. She has produced a recent body of work that focuses on her most beloved plants, orchids.

Alvarez’s work is a very deliberate affront to traditional views of art which do not consider the use of wood as a legitimate medium of “high” art. Her style, while figurative, is not representational. Her orchids vary greatly in size and are usually presented against highly abstract backgrounds. To attain the highly developed quality of her work, Alvarez Magliano has utilized many well-documented marquetry techniques of the English and American schools, and has also begun exploring alternative methods of layering wood proposed by the French school of “de Vriz”, apparent in her latest pieces.

In addition, Alvarez Magliano has drawn from other sources in nature besides wood. She has incorporated non-traditional marquetry elements into her work, such as semi-precious stones, copper, silver, lead, mother of pearl, and abalone and uses both paint and wood stains to enhance the already varied natural coloring of wood.

While Alvarez Magliano, a circuit judge of the Argentine judiciary, has dedicated her professional efforts to academic activities in the field of labor law, she is a member of the American Marquetarian Inc, a non-profit organization devoted to supporting artists working with wood. She actively promotes the work of the American Marquetarian, Inc. through her contributions to editorials published by the AMI magazine and assists with the translation of the Society’s monthly publications into Spanish.

She says…

“Wolf Khan says that every artist has one medium that determines the way he uses every other one. In my case, the medium is wood. The varieties of cuts and grains of each type of wood are countless and allow me to express myself and ‘paint’ with them. I use the bevel, double cut method that my mentor, Dave Peck from California, taught me. About orchids, it has been a long time since I’ve grown them here in my native Buenos Aires. This series is based on my collection of laelias, cattleyas and other South American and adapted species.
I must acknowledge the influence that Georgia O’Keeffe’s flowers have had on me. My work depicts my vision of the wonderful world of colors, shapes and perfumes while also challenging some of the conventional characterizations of marquetry as craft and not art. I design my pictures as a viewer standing in front of the object in an extreme close-up, as if the object was trying to emerge from the frame and demanding that the observer guess the proper orientation of the image. I invite you to share with me that particular world. ”