Born in Luxembourg in 1947, Elisabeth Calmes is an artist with an unusual background. After graduating from ENSAAMA (École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d’art – College of Arts and Design) in Paris, she began her professional career as an interior designer. It wasn’t until the 1980s that she was able to dedicate herself to her true calling, painting. Since 1987, her work has been shown in galleries across Europe and the US.
As an exhibition, ECCO is compelling because it brings together works that draw simultaneously on the two major undercurrents in painting since the beginning of the 20th century, figurativism and abstraction. ECCO also traces Calmes’ journey through the years, between Paris, Brooklyn (where the artist lived in 2008 and 2009) and Luxembourg.
Of the exhibition and her work, Calmes had this to say: “ECCO is the word my painting represents, the one it seems to speak most clearly. ECCO. This is the results of the developments over the past few years. The subjects are those life has illuminated. Cities, music and nature are all events that I have metabolised on the canvas.”
Elisabeth Calmes’ ECCO will be open to the public on business days from 8 March to 24 May 2019 (8am to 6pm) at Galerie L’Indépendance in Luxembourg, 69 route d’Esch.
