Figures in red and blue, 1993

Just like her paintings, Eleonora Stol (Leiden, 1946), also known as ‘La Roja’, has a bright and colorful appearance. Always dressed in red and well-known in the Amsterdam art scene, the former muse of Anton Martineau creates large paintings in her expressive and distinctive style.

She calls her works ‘art that is sincere and created from within. Made from a passion and unremitting fighting spirit.’ Her paintings have a recognisable handwriting, playful colors and challenging images. Many of her paintings are like fragments, remains of bodies devoured with lust, which in an elegant and freshly composed form attest to the eroticism of the feast.

Red is the basic colour, the signifier of passion. She creates images about lust, influenced by such things as tango and the Italian language. Her work reminds us, in technique and subject matter, of the Surrealist movement with its automatic painting and dreamlike scenes.

Dream and reality interweave, themes from art history, her personal life and popular culture are visible. Her works are built up with techniques from oil paint to graffiti and collage. They leave the beholder fascinated and intrigued.

Anton Martineau on Eleonora Stol’s work: ‘… dream and jumbled reality in which love is the central theme… The work does not let you go, you get carried away by the intense emotional movement of the figures.’