“untitled” By Camélia Otero.

Mixed media on canvas. Monogrammed upper left, dated 2023 and signed on the back. Height: 100 cm. Length: 150 cm. More than other critics in Italy, I chose to apply a method which has a long tradition in the “Salons des Refusés” in France where it was possible to recognize, in no less difficult and crowded times, artists such as Manet and Gauguin. The works of Camélia Otero recall certain pages of Kafka. Agitation, apprehension, anxiety and moodiness are poured onto the canvas. The recurring sign is the primitive sign of Cubist memory. Barely sketched figures surrounded by broad black lines like those found in the Altamira cave or those of Lascaux, the subjects are exclusively real people represented in their fleetingness, faces which tell of difficulties and existential complexities. I like to define Camélia Otero's work as archaic and cellular. The figures, sketched full-length, half-length or full-face, are grouped on the surface with primitive features in the form of a mask as if they were floating in a primordial cytoplasm. An art which, in agreement with the artist's thought, becomes “the essence of origins” which identifies, in the Antiquity of the world, the origin of humanity which shaped it. Vittorio Sgarbi. Critic and Art Historian.