Gianella Riephoff’s red has always been a declaration of life. On her canvases,
it is pulsing passion, overflowing energy, a warm embrace translated into
pigment. Her signature is celebration. But what happens when this force—
almost a synonym for the artist herself—is confronted by an absolute green, a
vastness that precedes history? What happens when the embrace must
become a cry?
Green, the forest’s ultimate symbol, does not arrive softly. It emerges dense,
profound, layering upon itself like a sound that fills the body before becoming
thought. In this setting, red—the artist’s visceral mark—invades the
composition, no longer as celebration but as a river of warning. It is the red of
life, blood, and resistance. For Gianella, color is not chosen; it arises as
urgency. And if red has always been her intimate cry, in the Amazon it
becomes collective. “My red here is furious. It embraces leaves and animals. It
is a force trying to draw attention to the current issues of deforestation and
disrespect for nature,” she confesses.
What emerges on her canvas is a forest that does not offer itself to passive
viewing. Gianella forces us to perceive—not with ears, but with skin. Her
painting is the sound of leaves, of animals, of absences. It is a silence that is
not stillness but the echo of species gone. “It’s a silence that screams. A
silence of fire, of flames, of extinction. And with every layer of paint, it grows,”
she says.