Gladys Baccalàx10

Swiss illustrator Gladys Baccalà creates intimate portraits in a stark expressive mode that combines multiple art-making methods. Though she begins her works in pencil and tempera, much of her practice is also accomplished digitally. The result is a hybrid style melding age-old methods with computer technology to achieve a visual style that is visually timeless yet very contemporary in its content. Her human figures are sharply defined while their surroundings remain flat, vague and weathered, evoking the portraiture style of Egon Schiele. However, the similarities between Baccalà’s characters and the Austrian artist’s tortured souls are fleeting.

There is an endearing sense of humor and empathy in Gladys Baccalà’s subjects, a level of understanding that gives them depth but also allows them to speak to the viewer. The alternately plump, pencil-thin and angular bodies – many which are partially concealed or hidden – portray a compromised relationship between interior and exterior, between personal space and public life. These archetypal figures whose faces are often unreadable convey emotion through embodiment.