Résilience (2021) Painting by Marijo Ponce Fest

Maria Josefa was born in Tangiers in 1946 after her parents, Spanish republicans, left their country after the civil war and moved to Morocco. She grew up in a cosmopolitan environment and was nourished by the colours and lights of Africa.

When she was eleven, her family returned to Europe and settled in France. Little by little, the artistic fibre emerges in parallel with her professional activities. A very short period in the aesthetic field allowed her to acquire the touch and sensitivity of the body. Nevertheless, the perceptible lack of human beings was quickly felt and Marijo naturally turned to the elderly, bringing her sensitivity to bodies steeped in experience.

Taking on her affect, exacerbating her emotions while mixing her Andalusian origins, painting and sculpture allow her to retranscribe the strength, vivacity and pain of her roots. It is only since her retirement that Marijo can fully dedicate herself to her artistic passion.

She presents her work at local exhibitions and participates in workshops while continuing to look after her family, with whom she shares her knowledge and love of art.

She then creates an anthology of creations in the form of paintings, drawings in watercolour, acrylic, pastels and charcoal of naked bodies in order to capture their emotions and translate them into expressive lines. The clay modelling gives a new way to translate his vision of the emotion felt towards his living models.

In search of a spontaneity and vitality that she makes sensitive through her brushstrokes, she does not hesitate to tell the story of these bodies - imperfect, twisted, aged - through which fragments of her own history shine through, through her paintings and the work of the clay with her sculptures.

• Nationality: FRANCE
• Date of birth : 1946
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary French Artists