Flora Yukhnovich
Capriccio
2019
Oil on linen
150 x 245 cm
59 1/8 x 96 1/2 in
‘I kept thinking about the difference between Venetian and French Rococo. Venetian Rococo has a distinctive treatment of space which is logical, organised in planes like a theatre set. I wondered if I could knit the layers together using Tiepolo’s diagonal movements to collapse the space at points in the composition, bringing paint to the fore. I wanted it to feel as if it were undoing and reforming itself across the whole picture plain as well as in the figuration. This painting, based on Francesco Zuccarelli’s The Rape of Europa (between 1740 and 1750) in the Accademia, combined with some of the French figures and fleshy forms I had looked at before, feels like a synthesis of what I learned in Venice and ideas I had been working on back home (looking at the French fête galante genre and converting it into sort of all female garden of Eden).’
Flora Yukhnovich, May 2020