"I accepted this project trusting that I would find a way of integrating my work with the existing form of the violin rather than arbitrarily decorating it.
"Aside from its acoustic capabilities, the violin is already a proportionate and visually balanced instrument. Although symmetrical to its axis, with its gentle curves it appears to contain predominantly organic shapes. To my delight I discovered that these shapes are also confirmed by an underlying mathematical logic. This is the realm which I am passionate about in my own work.
"The apparent visual center of the violin is exactly between the upper ends of the f-shaped sound holes, but it is also the actual center of a square on which the outside curves intersect. Thus, by inserting a rigidly painted square shape within the existing curved shapes, I simply accentuated the violin's geometric origins. I thought that the resulting visual drama needed to be reinforced by using a combination of strong primary colors as well as pure black and white.
"By splitting the light along the vertical axis, I was able to slightly shift and destabilize the violin's dimensional and spatial characteristics. The resultant visual tension initiates a rotational movement which makes the entire form resonate."
Marko Spalatin
Marko Spalatin was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1945 and emigrated
to the United States in 1963. He received his B.S. and M.F.A. degrees
from the University of Wisconsin--Madison and has been a self-supporting
artist since 1969. His work is in many private and public collections,
including The Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin; Musée d'Art
Moderne, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Bibliothèque
National, Paris; Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Victoria & Albert
Museum, London;
Philadelphia
Museum of Art; Milwaukee Art Museum; Brooklyn Museum, New York; and The Butler
Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
The artist lives in Blue Mounds,
Wisconsin.
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