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"My pictures have always been about what I would miss if my ordinary, especially intimate life, was taken away from me for some reason."
Art school in the 1980s put little stock in figurative art, especially such seemingly simplistic figurative art when the domesticity depicted therein was at variance with contemporary concepts of what 'women's art' should strive to be about. However, encouraged by her mentor, Paula Rego, Anita Klein persisted, and began to accumulate a visual diary; an honest, generous celebration of the fact that, despite our human proclivity for narrative, it is the rather minor quotidian moments that constitute the majority of most of our lives. 40 years on, Anita has not deviated from this truth. Whereas her first prints were of herself, as a new mother with her daughters Maia and Leila, 35 years later, after hundreds of drypoints, linocuts, lithographs, silkscreens and etchings, it is now Maia and Leila who appear as mothers, with young children of their own and Anita clearly enjoys the role of grandmother to her four beautiful grandchildren.
With few exceptions, Anita's subjects are those brief 'ordinary' moments that we so often take for granted; sometimes because we find them tiresome, sometimes because they lack any apparent novelty, and often because we are unable to appreciate their significance as they unfold. Although these moments may lack a grand narrative individually, they possess a rich meaning as a collection of memories, each print being a window onto a full, and relatable life. Anita's works reflect the myriad of feelings that we get from being enmeshed in the complicated, beautiful web of family relationships.
Eames Fine Art have worked with Anita for over 25 years and over that time we have curated and produced numerous exhibitions and publications, each dedicated to a different series of work Anita has produced. But it is only now, when we take this opportunity to perceive the entire body of work Anita has made over the past 40 years that the extent of Anita's achievement becomes apparent. As a totality, the documentation of her four-decade career presents us with an artefact of radical intimacy, one which lead The Guardian to proclaim that, in the recent past, 'No British artist has more thoroughly explored the female experience of family than Anita Klein.'
