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 Mai
Onno with all her soul
in her paintings. The consequence
of a creator that her full artistic maturity shows the
wisdom of being.
With
the strength of feeling and the power of reason, Mai
molds into her images the immaterial fluid of her daily
living. The absolute spreads, the opposites can live
together. The cries of black oils and red unmerciful
textures followed by yellow rounding's, drops of life
wandering among the lighted wings of the birds.
Mai,
free from the structured intention of showing a sole
concept, points out with her artwork the nakedness of
her soul. each painting is a half open door to her sacrarium.
Deep inside the pleasure cuts, turns painful, and grabs
glares of solace.
Franz
Kafka believed that books should be axes that could
cut the iced sea that we carry inside. Mai Onno makes
out of her painting a stiletto that pierces the heart.
Laura Hernandez
Sadurni
San Miguel de Allende, Gto.
1997
Mai Onno's
arresting works have been widely admired in such distinguished
venues as the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City and galleries
in the United States and Canada. Since 1975 she has shown
annually at Bellas Artes in San Miguel.
Born
in Estonia in the chaotic era of World War II (Russian
invasion, German invasion), she emigrated to Canada
as a teenager. A scholarship in art brought her to San
Miguel de Allende to study at Instituto Allende where
she met and married Lothar Kestenbaum, a German-born
professor of sculpture.
She
studied and worked in Europe and the United States,
where son David was born in 1965, then returned to San
Miguel in 1971. Even before returning to live here she
had claimed a place in the Mexican art world: In 1962
she won first prize at the Fourth National Exhibition
of Painting, judged by Rufino Tamayo.
A
bold colorist, her works explode with a spectrum from
bombshells to rainbows. She uses natural forms as take-off
points: dancers, hearts, landscapes. But the tides which
follow are her own emotions intensely conveyed through
form and color.
Robert Somerlott
San Miguel de Allende, Gto.
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