The people who populate Elena Samperi's paintings live in a world of brilliantly coloured wallpapers, bright carpets, zingy purples, pinks and metallic blues. Her work hints at the distresses of domestic life by exaggerating the surface happiness. Flattened on to the picture plane, the happy family is practically part of the wallpaper. Yet the angry Gaiety of the interior décor serves to underline rather than negate the internal confusions o the family.
Rozsika Parker, Spare Rib
There is nothing more sinister than a sinister
comedy, nothing less innocent that feigned innocence as Elena Samperi well
knows. She uses the apparent friendliness of her yellow Submarine drawing-style
to lure you into a world of Happy Families and wedding anniversaries, a world
populated by manically grinning monsters who bear a strong resemblance to the
human race.
The Happy Family consists of mother, father, daughter
and the doll, which dangles from the daughter’s hand like Goya’s hanged man.
Behind them a typical piece of Samperi wallpaper breaks out in psychedelic
twitches like the obsessive doodlings of s schizophrenic. Everything in this
picture, from the smiled of the parents to the budding womanhood of the
daughter has been twisted out of shape.
Waldemar Januszczak
The Guardian 1981
…in Elena Samperi’s Madonna. Based on the classical
theme of Madonna and Child, it shows a woman letting out a scream of agony as
she suckles her baby. In this case the “baby” is a fully grown but miniature
man, complete with pubic hair and genitalia who, with sharpened teeth, chews
heartily on her breast. Ironically, and despite the scream from the twisted
mouth, the woman sits calm and placid, nursing the child who is hurting her. It
is a brilliant and witty commentary on women and children, and the role of many
women in a male-dominated world.
Emmanuelle Cooper
Gays News, October 1980
Elena was a person of contrasts. Very sure of
herself, an aggressive security in some moments and at the same time a capacity
to doubt nearly to disintegration…
We used to laugh at all this dramatic panorama and
Elena always used a Tango phrase: “Life is an absurd wound” (La vida es una
herida absurda)
Marisa Rueda
Obituary,
Women’s Slide Library Journal, 1988
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