Shadows 3 Print

Shadows »A human being is only breath and shadow.«—Sophocles Anna Grau also dedicates herself to the nature of the feminine in her Shadows series. Compared to the Lilith cycle however, Shadows constitutes a conceptual development in that she does not depict her women in portraits, but instead embeds them in large-scale compositions. ... It is precisely such elements that define Anna Grau’s magical realism: on the one hand, it seems that the woman is part of the natural space that surrounds her; on the other, meanwhile, she emerges from the shadows of her surroundings as though materialising before our eyes to lure us into her world ... In this respect, the landscapes Anna Grau has placed onto canvas are of particular importance. In general, nature in her untamed, wild forms and likewise in her twilight states epitomises for many the incomprehensible and uncontrollable, something that induces a sense of helplessness and hence a more or less pronounced fear. At the same time, humans possess only very limited, and in some cases no access to our inner nature, our subconscious. Most of it is, to use an expression coined by C.G. Jung, hidden in the shadows, in other words, the unknown and dark part of the human mind. Moreover, in many ancient cultures, the shadow cast by every human being was considered a part of the soul which, being outside the body, needed special protection. It now becomes clear why the shadow motif is of such significance in this series of paintings. The outer nature, which fills the background of the painting, is the plane of projection for the subject’s inner nature, expressed above all through the facial expressions of the women in the foreground of the images. Outer and inner nature are subtly connected; in complementing each other, they are interdependent.