Isabeli Oliver, Happy Meeting

Seemingly ordinary, fun, and yet disturbing.

Isabel Oliver is from Valencia. She painted The Happy Meeting in 1971.

The painting is part of the “Woman” series realized by the artist in the years 1970-73 and is the most representative work of the series, and I am the best example of Oliver’s artistic achievements. A kind of innocent meeting, but … Do we only think that the influence of Salvador Dali can be seen in the background? Those expressive steeds in an otherworldly pool… and what’s that giraffe doing here? We ask a question … please write in the comments, I wonder what you think …

Also interesting is the foreground and the presence of a terrifying woman as seen in an X-ray … among the factual crowd of nice ladies busy discussing the work plan of an architectural office or fashion showroom.

Isabel Oliver studied at the Facultad de Bellas Artes in Valencia. In the years 1970-1971, she began experimenting with figurative painting, which more and more marked her path. In 1971 Equipo Crónica, a well-known collective founded by Rafael Solbes and Manuel Valdés in 1965, noticed Oliver’s work and invited her to collaborate. Equipo Crónica tried to appropriate the language of the mass media to emphasize issues related to Spanish national identity. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s Factory, the group’s artists collaborated to create images to eliminate individual authorship. During this time, Oliver was creating a parallel collection of works on women in Spanish society. While Crónica wondered what it meant to be Spanish, Oliver wondered what it meant to be a woman.

In The Woman 1970–3 series, Isabel Oliver portrayed women in home or imaginary scenes, criticizing their role in Spanish society.