‘A Journey....Take time for this journey, along winding paths leading to secret places and a subtle landscape of light and shadow, of ridges, crevices, where once cities existed.’- Jeanne Masoero

‘The dramatic landscape of the Yucatan, the extraordinary architecture and echoing spaces of the great Mayan and Aztec sites had a profound effect upon her.’ ( Essay: ‘Background to an Artist’s Life’ by Edward Rutherfurd in Jeanne Masoero: A Survey by Sacha Craddock, Lund Humphries, 2002)

In the summer of 1977, Jeanne Masoero began one of the most important journeys for the development of her work, a journey through the Mayan sites of Yucatan in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, inspired by the writing of Italo Calvino. Throughout this personal journey she explored unexpected and surprising paths, both physically and emotionally. She discovered the ruins of Mayan architecture which became the basis for this show of ‘Invisible Cities’. As in Calvino, the names of the cities she depicted were inventions of her imagination and not the real names. For Masoero, it was a process of discovery, where the travel was more important than the destination. The canvas became for her the place from which the artist starts a journey, a map to lead us to those imaginary and invisible places that inhabit the self. Her work is not the image of the place but the experience of that place. ‘I always loved maps, even as a child.’...