THE ART OF ITALA

Stories spill out of Kenilworth artist Itala Langmar in a free-flowing stream.

From her birthplace near Venice, Italy, more than 70 years ago, to the North Shore and back again, her animated tale reaches a celebratory peak this month with her inclusion in shows in both places—The 2023 Evanston Vicinity Biennial, which opened at the Evanston Art Center last weekend (on view through October 1) and an international, juried art show at the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in Venice opening September 21.

A painter, mixed-media artist, and poet from early childhood, Itala says she has “always experienced colors and words as my ideals, my calling.” The works selected for both shows are the latest expression of this.

Her multi-layered mixed-media piece for the Biennial, “Elegy for Botticelli” is a muted abstraction of color blocks painted over and under a mesh screen, with the words of her poem of the same title woven throughout. A curving painted wand of wood mounted to the right of the piece is what she calls its epilogue—an element included in her paintings since July 2022. Her two paintings for the show in Venice—the blue-hued “Space Silence Reverberation” and yellow green “Embracing Temporal Splendor”—also merge poetry with painting. Translating nature, and the search for luminosity is a constant in the works, rendered in a style she calls Geometric Lyricism.

Born into a prosperous, but authoritarian Italian household, Itala lacked nothing in her education, learning to read and translate Latin, Greek, and French at the classical Lyceum, and receiving private tutoring in painting starting at age 6. “I had encouragement, leisure and everything provided for me,” she says.

But there were disappointments. Although she wanted to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, she obeyed her father’s wishes to instead go the University of Architecture and Design there. She did finish the fiveyear degree, although architecture was not a good fit for Itala, who wanted only to write and paint. Still, it was there that she met her husband, Imre, who pursued his architecture practice in Chicago, allowing Itala to more happily focus on art and raising two sons in Kenilworth.

Throughout the decades, Itala enjoyed success with her paintings—including showings in New York, Chicago, and the North Shore, written up for her work in many publications, and included in “The Chicago Art Scene” (Crow Woods Publishing, 1998) a compendium featuring the work of 68 contemporary artists, from David Abed to Ed Paschke.

With her poetry, Itala diligently submitted to journals, compiled much of the work into two chapbooks, and was thrilled to be a finalist in the 1999 Gwendolyn Brooks poetry competition. “Brooks really like my liked one of poems about an old, disheveled artist living in a cardboard box,” she laughs.

However, overcoming two personal tragedies in the late ‘90s would prove to be a dark time that took everything Itala had to transcend. She lost her husband to lung cancer, and then months later, one of her sons who was in his early ‘20s.

Writing and painting through the tragedies eventually led Itala to pursue two more degrees: a Master of Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago and a Master of Arts in Art Therapy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While there, Itala became fascinated with the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who used the mandala as a tool for self-discovery and self-realization. She began painting mandalas as part of her own recovery and used them when working with adults as an art therapist intern. The process, culminating in a show at Lloyd Shin Gallery in Northbrook, would prove to be a beautiful expression of self-healing.

Currently, Itala’s works are mixed-media paintings merging her experience of nature with her poetry. She paints in her upstairs studio, or in her garden, always with WFMT in the background, and she thinks and writes poetry wherever she goes.

Here is a recent excerpt from her piece, “The Lady Clothilde:”

The Lady Clothide’s transparent collection of bones is gracing the embroidered sheets of an impossible elegant bed. She is connected to the song of rotating Tenebrae, rotating around her in a silent farewell. The Lady Clothilde invisible, almost not there, has heard her richiamo. She is ready to go…

“Art. Let me tell you about art,” sums Itala. “Art at its best helps illuminate things invisible and move the heart toward feelings of inner peace, generosity, and quiet strength. In my long life, that is what I have aimed for. It is what I have always been about.”

For more information about the Evanston + Vicinity Biennial, visit evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions/2023-evanston-vicinity-biennial-exhibition. For art inquiries, contact Itala Langmar at [email protected].