Lot 244: OLGA TOBRELUTS (B. 1970)

HERCULES WIFE

120 by 73,5 cm.

cibachrome, framed, signed on the reverse, 1996

PROVENANCE

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

LITERATURE

H. Peeters, A. Rammant, Olga Tobreluts, Digitalized Academism, Antwerp 1999, p. 33

NOTE

Olga Tobreluts has been working since 1994 as a digital artist in which she has managed to become a classical post-modern author who combines various sources and treates these ironically. Although this may seem to have the potential complexibility of numerous intelligent interpretations the works are however kept deliberately very simple. The works of Tobreluts are computer generated modifications of antique helenistic sculptures which, through digital treatment become modern heroes. In the work Hercules'wife the Greek heroic theme of Heracles is illustrated where Olga Tobreluts is playing the hero's wife herself.

Olga Tobreluts is an adherent of Neoacademicism which is a direct continuation of the classical style of ancient times and of every manifestation of that style in European classicism. By manipulating mythology with computers this group of modern Russian artists digitalize the features of their contemporaries into goddesses of beauty. Olga Tobreluts emphasizes beauty which we seemingly have lost according to the old canon in art as where the valued beauty of the Greeks was embodied in the divine and heroism. As advertisements dominates modern life and its beauty, the photograph of Herculus'wife melts the beauty of antiquity in the nowadays.