By Rachel Grossmann

The country that has given us Absolut Vodka, Ikea and Greta Garbo has yet something in reserve for us.It is Sophie Dunér, a young composer and jazz singer that during her sparetime paints pieces of art in vibrant colours. We shall through her naivistic paintings enter this artists world.

You could say that this woman reflects an authentic cultural smorgosbord. Among her musical influences are Kurt Weill, Charlie Chaplin, Bjork and Schoenberg, Egon Schiele and Pippi Longstocking. Her efforts in the visual arts represents a fascinating mix such as her music.

Living in Madrid, educated in USA and with deep Swedish roots, Dunér represents in her paintings a strong combination of three important world cultures and her own artistic personality.

The magic in her world comes from a significative touch of the childish world and from the universe of the fairy tales.

After years of academic studies in the musical direction, Sophie wanted to return to a less artificial professional focus and a more intuitive one. She says that in order to grow, you have to have a delicate balance between the primitive and the intelectual., meaning, instead of erazing the ”dirty”, you have to make the art more dirty in order to emotionally reach out to people. In many of her paintings, we can see floating people that are breaking the natural laws. Its personalities live in an imaginary world.There is without doubt a unique dynamic movement in her art. You have a feeling of timelessness, as if it stood still. In her work ”Chevalier”, we can see two halfnaked women on the beach.These two fly with floating and comfortable movements without the daily complication of gravity.To fly without having to land, a splendid way to travel, especially with the cabaret and the circus.

In relation to this, Dunér confesses; ” as a girl, I hated the circus, the truth is I was scared of it but now it is the opposite, I find something irresistible in it. On a formal level, I am fascinated by the evil side of the circus and the cabaret. In her works, we often see people from the theater with big animals hidden as a curtain in the background.

In her imaginary world, there are cats, elephants, horses and there are also grotesque aspects exagerated of the personalities themselves.But there are an equally important stage for this young artist; the world of everyday, the one that consists of interactions

between people in the social world.This subject reflects the potent universe of the gossip of our beloved country.If you look with great attention, you can see Dinio or Super Obregón in her work. There are surely a great amount of persons that are posing.Her characteristic tecnique of caligraphic lines produces portraits with marced features such as the melodrama and the gossip press. We find an authentic jungle of big eyes, manycoloured hair and many, many hats.Every personality seems completely eaten by the social spectacle that they create for the other.Every face says: look, look – its me-I am super interesting.That way, Dunérs paintings connects the daily life . The thing of observing wehat happens to the people, especially to the well known and the ones from the theater, the ones from ”The Gran Show”. Talking about this, there is a really beautiful work ” La Cena” ( The Last Supper ). In this work, we have six women and in between them and their dinner, that draws the attention.Every woman has her own particular style with a hair such as Sansón and with very comunicative gestures.

The woman in the middle is a personality, it seems like the one with the hand says;

This is my chicken, don´t touch it and bon appetite with your sallad, sweetheart.

The poor woman to the left has only a cup of coffee but has also an extravagant, expressive and concurring hairstyle that compensates it. And the woman with the sallad is wonderful, that is expressed with a subtle aura.

But, this is too superficial. The artist also treats more serious subjects such as the role of the woman in our culture. In respect to this, she says; I see myself as a mix between a very strong woman and a very week one.I like to experiment the most agressive side of the woman in my paintings.She finds the perfect woman without spots a bit flat or wimpy. For her, the women are integrating creatures with sweet sides as well as bitter.In this way, the work ”A life-The hooker, the mother and the old” very important  With this work, I would like to say that a woman shows many sides during her life; one part of it, she is a hooker, other parts, mother. The nice thing is that Dunér appreciates this equaly much. And, when she says whore, it has more to do with the sexual expressivity than the condemning. Acording to the artist, one has to accept everything that is inside without any reserve. In ”Voila”, we can see in a very dramatic way the effect of a female main character above a man. The man is passive such as a stone. Only touching him, he falls apart into pieces. It is not exactly the picture from a living passionate man from the newspaper ”GQ”. But, one has to appreciate it.

Rachel Grossmann is an american journalist living in Madrid with her spanish family and writes about cultural subjects. She has a degree in Russian literature from Harvard and a postgraduate from the Courtyard Institute of Art in London.