Bonita Silver, is a self-taught artisan whose inspirations came to her at the age of 16 while studying art in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
Due to the inspiration of the great works of El Lissitzky, Frank Lloyd Wright, M.C. Escher, and the Bauhaus Era, Bonita’s own geometric techniques and interpretations of this great art form emerged. Forty years ago, Bonita began her collection designs in the pen and ink medium. It was after the development of the pen and ink technique that Bonita soon started to experiment with colour, oils, acrylics and leaf on canvas to accommodate her designs on a larger scale.
As the onset of the computer age began to unfold in the designing world, Bonita went back to school in order to bring the newest age of design capabilities into her realm of designing techniques.
Being a geometrical artisan in Art Deco, Bonita researched the Art Deco Constructivism Era with great interest. Once seeing that geometrics predominated designs in the Deco Era, Bonita set out to establish a collection, which features some of her works as a purest in this format of artistry.
From the past comes the future and it is Bonita’s goal to prevent this artistry from disappearing in the 21st century and to establish herself as the leading Art Deco Constructivist Artisan in North America today.
Introduction to Art Deco – Constructivism
The beginning of Art Deco Constructivism began in the Netherlands in the early 1900’s. It was the De Stijl Movement, which produced the first journal that allowed the venting of the feeling about Art, Architecture, and the world in general.
There was a gradual realization of perception and representation into the horizontal, the vertical, primary colours, black, white and grays.
It was the designer, Gerrit Rietveld, who built a house as an exercise in three-dimensional and it was the colours that he chose which picked out the structural detail.
It was El Lissitzky, a Russian Constructivist artist, who in 1920 published an article on Rietveld, which aided in the spread and knowledge of avant-garde ideas in art, architecture and design.
In Russia – the Constructivist movement had its own language and was adopted as a revolutionary art form. Constructivism represented a reduction and rejection of traditional artistic representation and saw its purpose in social change and a strong belief in the machine.
Constructivism was abandoned in 1921 and it was Laszllo Moholy-Nagy who had links with the Constructivist at this time. He was influential in placing this artistic theory and practice at the Bauhaus. He was the one who ensured that the principles of Constructivism were not allowed to die.
The influences of Constructivism were very apparent in many images in European design during the 1920’s.
Constructivism is a strong geometrically and architecturally based language. My purpose as a Constructivist artisan is to ensure that this great form of artistry is carried into the 21st century for interior design and fine art.
Ryerson University – BA in Administration 1978
First Interactive Computer College – Multimedia Certificate 1998
