Galleria Dante Presents Ute Hagen Opening at Southside Shuffle
February 3, 2016

As part of the Southside Shuffle in Old Town Vallarta, Galleria Dante invites you to the cocktail opening exhibition of Ute Hagen on Friday, February 5 2016 from 6:00 until 10:00 pm. Come meet this exciting artist!

Ute Hagen

For all the soft lines and wobbly brush strokes plumped with paint, Ute Hagen's acrylic works now showing at Galleria Dante are studies in precision. Behind each of the luxurious, impressionistic paintings in the show is a solid perspective and an accomplished use of color.

At first look you will be drawn to the warm glow of yellows, blues and reds that she uses to capture light-filled still lives and familiar scenes. However on second look, you will inevitably appreciate how well she renders familiar objects, even though her style is about softening definitions and infusing the whole work with light. Her expert color handling and choice of subject matter within each canvas gives us those exquisite "snapshots" of the golden moments that live in our memory of places and things long after the moment is gone.

Even Hagen's remarks about her work are clear, precise statements although English is a third or fourth language behind her native German and studied French and Spanish. "My works are inner journeys and I use art to communicate. I welcome the challenge that comes with every canvas. I use color, light, and emotions as I try to express better and more deeply what I see. My personality thus becomes a filter through which these expressions pass", she states in an well- crafted portfolio that precedes her work in the gallery. "My work is imbued with my own perception and feelings."

Ute is an accomplished photographer. Her photographs, too, show us what moves her inner eye. Her photography is about people, doorways and buildings, the lake and still lives, revealing again her sense of what to leave in and what to leave out. They seem almost stark, however, next to the intense sensuality of her paintings, that which even the most novice of art viewers will be reminded of Van Gogh or Matisse.

Presumably, Hagen has been honing her skills since her first exhibition in Oberursel, Germany at age 15. Born in 1944 in Meissen, Hagen was compelled to put aside her passion for painting during post-war times and as a young woman, earned a Journeyman diploma in cabinet making in 1963. She used this education later to restore antique furniture, but it is also revealed in the deliberate constructions of her paintings. Two years after earning her diploma, she emigrated to Montreal, Canada where she began painting and exhibiting again while also working in the fashion industry.

In 1973 she began a love affair with Mexico, leaving after ten years to settle in the Gulf Islands off Vancouver, and then returning "more or less permanently" to Ajijic. Four years ago she moved permanently to Puerto Vallarta, where she had to have a view of Los Arcos, which has inspired her "jungle and panoramic views of the bay". Now Ute and her husband and menagerie of animals live on Conchas Chinas beach where she is inspired once again by her surroundings and the magic of Vallarta.

Galleria Dante is located at #269 Basilio Badillo in Old Town Vallarta. Telephone is (322) 222-2477. While there, visit the upstairs wine bar, Di Vino Dante.