Artwork by Maria Del Carmen Hildebrand
IWC Member 2013 - 2021
🌺IWC member Maria Del Carmen Hildebrand passed away on Tuesday 23 of March 2021 to the consequences of cancer. She was a very talented, smart, friendly and wonderful wife, mother and friend.
She was an artist and one of her wishes was to show her work. We honored this wish with an exhibition of her work at the April General Meeting in 2021. We invite you to view her work shown below in her memory.🌺
Beautiful letter from Maria’s husband explaining the paintings above:
Dear Ladies of IWC!
Thank you very much for the respect and the honour you have paid to Maria del Carmen at your last meeting (not only, but also and especially - I know you have repected each other all the time that she was proud member of IWC St. Petersburg). It was very touching for me and I will keep this memory alongside with the nice and unforgettable memories I am keeping of Maria del Carmen.
As there have been some questions regarding her paintings - I will try to answer as good as I can.
She never has considered herself to be an artists. She never felt she reached any level that could be considered "art".
She painted for herself only. Not in order to exhibit. This was one of the ways she discovered to express herself, so give memories, hopes, plans and expectations a colour, a form, a materiality.
She never painted what a teacher or instructor or anyone else asked her to paint. She painted what she wanted to paint, what she felt was inside her that needed to be expressed that way. So, there is a certain meaning behind/around/below each painting. I will try to describe (to the extend I understood it myself).
House at Żelazowa Wola. Place where Fryderyk Szopen (Frédéric Chopin) was born. We often visited this place while we spent wonderful years in Warszawa where our son Gabriel was born. This is a special place for us. Not only because of Chopin's music which we like(d) very much - especially the mazurek (mazurka) dance music which always reminded us of Mazowzse (Mazovia), the area around Warszawa.
Sailing boat. We are a family of sailors. Lakes, oceans, weekends, weeks. We are from the mountains of Bavaria and Austria, but water is our element, our love. So, Gabriel took sailing lessons (of course) and often Maria del Carmen went with him to lake Chiemsse in the beginning (now Gabriel sails on the Baltic and the North Seas, the Mediterranean) and stayed with him there enjoying him taking the lessons with enthusiasm while enjoing herself the beautiful countryside around the lake.
Flowers. She liked flowers, in the nature as well as at home. Most probably I did not present her flowers often enough, so she painted them herself instead. )).
Dancer. She liked and enjoyed theatre and ballet. When living in Warszawa we lived in the centre right next to Teatr Wielki, the Grand Theatre. Our first performance there was Jezioro Łabędzie (Swan Lake) shortly after we have moved there. This was a special event for us - but first of all we had to learn how to pronounce the Polish name correctly... And never forgot it.
Still Life. Sometimes she was not very happy with the results of her paintings, with objects not looking as they should (as she thought they should). So, she painted some still lifes exercising and improving her painting skills on objects gathered.
Provence. She liked the colour and smell of lavender, she also put it into our bathroom. One future day she wanted to see the lavender fields in the south of France. A dream that has never come true, but immortalised on canvas.
Church. This is a typical place anywhere in Russia. She liked the architecture and expression of Orthodox churches. She liked the onion-shaped cupolas in different colours and forms (like we have them in a slightly different form in the very south of Bavaria and in parts of Austria on Catholic churches as well).
Bronze plastic. She also tried to sculpture and create plactic arts. On bronze plastic (angel) I have presented. She enjoyed the process of forming the object and finally bringing it via many production steps into the bronze form in a foundry (for artists, not for industrial purposes). But it was not her real passion.
Icons. Painting icons was her real passion. She got immersed into the strictly defined painting process, the century-old rules and traditions, the expression of these icons. The Trinity has always been her object of desire, but she was not allowed to start with it and do it in the beginning. She was requested to gain experience before and prepare herself to paint the Trinity. So, she painted smaller icons (like the Archangels Gabriel, Rafael, Michael [most probably names that - if we had had more sons - ours sons would have taken]) before. As soon as she was considered prepared and ready by the master, she painted her personal masterpiece: The Icon of the Holy Trinity.
Thank you very much again!
All the best!
Holger
