Since 1994 Balagura dedicates all of his time to
painting and writing from his studio in Tesuque, New Mexico, USA. The
artist's education has been multifaceted and multicultural — a factor that
certainly has contributed to his oeuvre as a symbolic expressionist. The
interaction of these disciplines and his multicultural experiences pervade
the depth and color of his expressionistic paintings. Major artistic
influences come from artists as varied as Willem deKooning, Eduardo
Guayasamin, and el Greco.
In the 1960s Balagura began painting his
“Waiting Series” of which his Holocaust paintings are a part of. The concept
originated from the artist's interaction with the Colombian Indian and his
perception that certain peoples or cultures are practically predetermined in
their destiny. In a way, they simply appear to wait for their destiny. His
creative process transcends space and time to evoke the thoughts and
emotions of victims and survivors. At the same time, perhaps as a
counterbalance, he began painting also the “Girl Series” and the “Musician
Series”. Musicians were chosen as a symbol of the most human aspect of “man”
the animal, and consequently, its most fragile. Thus, the artist sees the
arts as a thin, feeble veneer, ready to be wasted by a society that cares
little for human achievement. The “Girl Series” conveys in the form of a
child or a woman either the perception of society or the way society
perceives women. These series are laden with heavy symbolism.
“I have chosen to describe my art as ‘Symbolic
Expressionism’. I chose this term in the 1950s and it has served its
purpose. Most of the images and beliefs we hold are transformed by the brain
into chemical prints. When we evoke them, they are reconverted into icons or
symbols that have been greatly influenced by many factors such as
experience, emotions, intellectualization, the overall brain state, etc. If
one then expresses a given image on the canvas allowing an interplay of
these icons with the emotions one wants to convey, and tempers that
interaction as it develops with a sense of esthetics, one has in fact
created an art form that fits quite appropriately under the term symbolic
expressionism. And this I do.”
