It is difficult to define Eli Heil’s work. Definitions represent a sense of limit and a certain rationalization of ideas that completely contradicts the primary concept behind Heil’s work, which is nothing short of boundless, explosive and delirious. Terms such as “ínsita art”, “Expressionist” and “Surrealist” have all been used to classify Heil as an artist. The truth is, however, that the work of Heil is best felt rather than defined. Before them, we are enveloped by forms that vibrate, colours that overflow and magical creatures whose personalities transgress the limits of materialism to manifest themselves to us.
Adalice Araújo
Owner of an acute sensitivity and a limitless ingenuity, the Catarinense artist has created a very real and permanent universe, where the presence of yesterday’s work is indispensable to the creation of today and tomorrow’s creations. This is not to say that Heil limits herself to looking for inspiration and formulas merely in her previous pieces. On the contrary, she refuses to do what she has already done. For Heil, her artistic creations are a way of continually being “reborn” and are the “home to marvels” that cannot be repeated otherwise lose their charm.
Annateresa Fabris
Eli Heil paints the world that surrounds her with a visionary and astounding palette. Without knowing, she is the little sister to the great German Expressionists Marc, Kirchner, Macke and also Vincent Van Gogh, in their shared passion of colour and the tortured forms of beings and objects.
Corneille G. B.
Eli Heil illustrates the world in her own way – a frugal abundance of animated colours and forms which are rich in rhythmic sensations. Heil is confident in the fact that her drawings and oils, which are like sedatives of from an overflowing psychic, fully correspond to the expressive language of art form which is embellished by the impact of multicolour.
Danúbio Gonçalves
...an absolutely unique artist. Extraordinary.
Fábio Magalhães
Eli Heil is an artist that we must recognise has a wonderful image and who also has a head-strong creativity to her. We are not fortunate enough to understand where the path began. Just that she discovered her own unique route.
Geraldo Ferraz
Being self-taught and without any theoretic schooling, the power of this artist is purely instinctive. An exceptional colourist who displays a surprising sense of composition. One can confidently use the word phenomenal when describing Eli Heil in the same way we use this to describe Jheronimus Bosch.
Harry Laus
As an artist who came from humble and unsophisticated beginnings, Heil has brought to her art form a pure and original sensitivity which has bequeathed us with some of the most edgy and vivacious work we know, without the normal series reservations and censorship that sometimes cultured people can impose.
Jandira Lorenz
Eli Heil has never been short of substance, precise language and communicative power, three qualities which are the foundation of artistic expression. To demand that she follow the vanguard and open up paths would be ingenuous. Those that touch the profound layers of the human soul have the right to not follow the required artistic and official protocols. Art can and should sometimes be uncomfortable.
João Evangelista de Andrade Filho
Without any instruction or cultural vision, Heil’s painting are equivalent to a confession or a externalisation of feelings. In other words, it is like an exorcism which tries to calm the inner demons who insist on jumping out of the canvas or paper in order to come to life, with Heil acting as a type of medium.
José Roberto Teixeira Leite
Poetry is commemorated and lives on in Heil’s work.
Lindolf Bell
A fascinating and compulsive creator...
Olívio Tavares de Araújo
There is no limit to her imaginary world. It is freedom that determines her creative process. It is right to confirm that this artist has had no influence from any chapter in the history of Art. She has created her own style and personal symbolism. The impact of this creative force multiplies in all that is touched by her aesthetic vision.
Osmar Pisani
Seeing as all Heil’s art work is a form of the conjuring strong mental force that are hidden within, we can observe in it a frequent presence of structures and a way of animating the inanimate (a marriage which transforms itself into people, windows and eyes that fixate onto us) not including the fantastic fauna qualities that accompany those extremely intense faces in colour, wonder and tension. It is also curious to observe in the evolution of Eli Heil’s drawings and paintings an intuitive obedience to follow the path to surpass the plane between three-dimensions. This includes the way in which she tunes into the figures hallucinatory violence that she says “come out” from inside the paper or the canvas, involving her in the act of creation. And so, after the first pieces with bio-dimensional surfaces, the paintings began acquiring relief in the handling of the paint grooves, until they developed into the most recent addition of stuffed dolls that are applied over the worked canvas. In this respect, Heil’s most elaborate pieces are actual object-tapestries, where she continues to preserve the ingenious expressionist deformation of violently colourful fantasy masks, as a direct registration of the subconscious flowing fluidly.
Roberto Pontual
We stand before a very real and unprecedented creational phenomenon: Eli Heil. In a land of real and false primitives, Heil is a rarity. A creature that plucks out of her subconscious all the human suffering and has found a new instrumental process that saves her conscience from the don’t-know-what-to-do norms. We realise that in artists such as Heil, creativity gushes out from the source of the subconscious as if it were commanded by higher forces and that crash down on us with their grand honesty.
Walmir Ayala
Time is a function that is ever present in Heil’s space: she engraves it onto this magical universe of “fauve” colours (applied to the canvas with a small instrument) as it flows in the wavy rhythm of the drawing, which has an affecting yet peculiar psychology. We are captured by this chaotic atmosphere and find ourselves at the limits of fantasy. However, an unprocessed logic unite all these fluctuating images that begin within Heil’s inner life experiences during evolution – the reason behind her admirable authenticity.
Walter Zanini
