Dana quando mais jovem, em Lourenço Marques.
Dana alguns anos mais tarde, a trabalhar.
Cópia de um dos desenhos a tinta da Dana, aqui a Rua Consiglieri Pedroso em Lourenço Marques, 1972.
Dana Michahelles (1933-2002) was born in Florence, Italy, and was the daughter of artists. Her father was the Florentine painter RAM (Ruggero Michahelles), her uncle was the Futurist painter Thayaht, and her great-grandfather was Hyram Powers, the Neoclassical American sculptor. She attended the Institute of Fine Arts in Florence, but at age 15, she left for Africa where she remained for 27 years, creating a contrasting identity as an artist. In Mozambique, she remained for 27 years, she had a family, and worked extensively, never ceasing to paint. Dana’s work is relatively unknown in her birth city, and this exhibition represents a selected retrospective of her finest works which can be considered narratives, cityscapes, and visual documentation illustrating life as it is being lived, never having lost her Florentine spirit. Many people remember her drawing in the streets with her pad of paper and her pens in Maputo (Mozambique), in Lisbon, in Cape Town, and in Florence. To everyone, she has left an impression of being a quiet yet very personable artist of great talent.Dana made her drawings in the midst of people, surrounded by noise, voices, movement, by LIFE itself. She put on paper the architecture that impressed her, with a decisive and strong line to represent the heavy and structural parts, while at the same time, she was able to capture an ephemeral world in constant mutation and movement, of people — of which she sketched lightly, giving the sensation of momentary passing and fleeting moments, as one can see in many of her works. Fundamentally for her drawing style, she worked as a draftsman for 10 years with the studio of the famous Portuguese architect Amandio Alpoim Guedes (known as Pancho Guedes). It was an era when everything was still drafted by hand; the technology and instruments of today did not exist. This was an advantage that permitted her to develop a fine sense of proportion and perspective while she perfected, year after year, a particular way of using pen and ink, her very specialization.
(texto copiado e ligeiramente editado, do sítio da SACI Gallery (Palazzo dei Cartelloni, Via Sant’Antonino, 11, 50123 Florença, Itália, T 055 289 948, e-mail gallery@saci-florence.edu) que entre Janeiro e Fevereiro de 2013 fez uma exposição das obras da Dana, indicando que algumas das suas peças ainda podem ser compradas à sua Família contactando directamente a Galeria.
Em 2001, a Editora Caminho publicou um livro ilustrado com 168 páginas de cópias dos trabalhos, capa azul, com o nome da Dana (ISBN: 9789722114301). que habitualmente está esgotado e que vai por uns 50 euros.
No Facebook há um pequeno grupo de amigos e admiradores de Dana que pode ser encontrando digitando o seu nome completo.
Um sketch de Malangatana Valente, 1961.
A Avenida Dom Luiz em Lourenço Marques, junto ao Avenida Building (“Prédio Pott”), 1972.
Interior do Bazar de Lourenço Marques, 1972.
Mais uma artéria de Lourenço Marques, 1972.
A entrada do Hotel Club na baixa de Lourenço Marques, 1972. Actualmente o edifício é um centro cultural estrangeiro.
A Travessa que liga da Rua Araújo à Rua Consiglieri Pedroso, na baixa velha de Lourenço Marques, 1972.
Poema de Rui Knopfli dedidcado a Dana.
THE DELAGOA BAY WORLD 