Alfredo Aya (b. Paris, 1954) is a French and Colombian painter. He is the son of Italian artist Luigi Boille and Colombian artist Cecilia Aya, who met in Paris, he grew up there in the midst of its art and culture. In his early 20’s, he moved to Colombia, bringing with him a sensibility formed by the soft pastel hues of blue and grey that are so characteristic of the île de France’s weather, and that greatly inspired impressionism. This naturally inherited perception of light conjoins to the feelings moved in Aya by Colombia’s atmosphere — whether interpreting a storm over the Caribbean or the rainy seasons of the Andes — for his work. He is based in Bogotà.
Alfredo Aya’s abstract compositions are lyrical, unfolding before the eyes like the themes of a symphony. Light, the principal element in his paintings, often comes from a precise opening; a window gaping in the afternoon sun, flashes of lightning across a thunderous sky… expanding into the atmosphere like musical lines; unfurling abstract signs and symbols (Kandisky-like) in a straight path, as in partitions for solo piano, or in refracted bursts like those of a concerto. He uses grey, like Whistler, to modulate vibrating strokes of color with a quality and brightness similar to that of pastel. Each piece has its own little music, exploring down the echoing streets of imaginary cities…
They evoke these lines from Jorge Luis Borges:
My soul is in the streets
of Buenos Aires.
Not the greedy streets
jostling with crowds and traffic,
but the neighborhood streets where
nothing is happening,
almost invisible by force of habit,
rendered eternal in the dim light of
sunset,
and the ones even farther out,
empty of comforting trees,
where austere little houses scarcely
venture
overwhelmed by deathless distances,
losing themselves in the deep expanse
of sky and plains.
(Excerpt from Las Calles)
Form and movement emerge from color in the same way that dance is natural to music. For me, color is the music of the painting. The greys, like silence in music, unite the colors, which sometimes oppose each other to have more strength, or complement each other, forming a harmony.
