A t-shirt with a photo by Germán

Germán asked me to paint a t-shirt with an image from a photo taken by himself:

And here it is:

Héctor

Under the influence of Pontormo

  Daniela was born a few months ago.
  I guess that she's still sleeping in the crib but one day she will have her bed.
  I like to donate painted sheets. It's an intimate gift in which you sleep. On them I can paint almost anything I wish.
   I have already written here before that I really like Pontormo. A short time ago I could see the exhibition that the Mapfre Foundation dedicated to him in Madrid and I have not resisted temptation to use his drawings for the Daniela's sheets.

  On the turn-down I copied these two figures:

  And, below, in a part that many time will be covered by the duvet, I painted the Lacalle:

  Daniela was going to be a reflection of her parents in the water, but il almost seems that he's going to drink her in the light of the round sun of the sweet Maria...

Another Pontormo for Daniela

  And someone migth wonder why I did not start from Botticelli instead of Pontormo but... I sign and so it goes.

2 engravings: Apollo and Dionysus

  This year I have decided to partecipate to the engraving contest organized by the Esdir (Superior School of design in La Rioja) and the Vivanco winery.

   Lately the subject of wine, so present in this region, motivates me.

  This week has been made public the decision of the jury and one of the 2 engraving I submitted has been selected. There will be an exhibition (from 5 to 29 June in the Esdir) and a catalog of the winners and selected.

  The theme of the plates is connected with both the fresco for Laura and the picture for the Piérola's Tralascuestas winery (which are also 2 older posts of this blog).

  The first sketches in watercolor showed a threshold, an access to a site throug a step.

  At first I was connecting it with the Ariadne's story (as in the picture for Tralascuestas).
  I considered pictures of catacombs and Roman marble inlaid floors.

Catacombs of Via Latina. Rome.

Detail of S. Clemente floor. Rome.

  I designed a space in which, through the story of the Minotaur told in pictures on a cruciform floor plan (preceded by an area of the labytinth represented on the floor) you reach a "room" where we see the triumph of Bacchus as a resurrection and the spider web on the ceiling alluding to the constellation in which Ariadna metamorphosed. I used models of art history (a relief of the frontispiece of the western facade of the Basilica of Saint Denis in France for her, for the boat, "St. Nicholas saving the boat" by Fray Angelico in the Vatican Pinacoteca, for the mazein the foreground, a detail of the font of Aguilar de Campoo in Palencia), one of my drawings (for the figure of Theseus/boxer) and anoter one of "Blue", an italian painter who makes "street art" (for the figure of the Minotaur).

Pencil sketches. Boxer/Theseus (from one of my frescos)

  But it was not what I wished and so I changed my mind.

This time I thought to draw inspiration from the mosaics in the basilica of Santa Costanza in Rome.

  I decided to revisit the issue of "Apollonian" and "Dionysian/Bacchic " as I did in the fresco for Laura: the rational part, represented by Apollo, who tries to "catch" the instinctive or unconscious part, symbolizes by Bacchus (or Dafne in the fresco). All very "yin-yang".

  I drew a figure who is sleeping on a couch with a bottle of wine and a glass on the table and some images of vines hanging over her on the wall (similarly to Santa Costanza). This is with regard to Bacchus.
  Regarding to Apollo, another figure (whose head I took from the Apollo of "The forge of Vulcan" by Velasquez) turns the sleeping figure  into Bacchus in a drawing. The press "shaft" replaces the sun's rays araund his head.
  (I also thought, but then I did not, that I could present to the contest two engravings: the first one, that I have just descrived, and a second one, where Bacchus would have been engraving the artist of the first one).

Pencil sketch

The vines on the wall, pencil sketch

"The Forge of Vulcan" by Velasquez. Prado Museum. Madrid.

  

Detail of "The Forge". Apollo

Velasquez, head of Apollo

  I thought to use some old drawings I did of Julián while was sleeping, but eventually I decided not to do it and for Bacchus I chose a work of David Hockney.

Julián sleeping

David Hockney, "Dream inn", 1996.

Etching, plate discarded.

More sketches.

  I liked the idea but I grew tired of so much artistic references (references where much better than my engraving). I wished something simpler.
  I did the copper plates with the vines and replaced the engraver of the first plate with an "Apollo" more "usual", while is taking a foto.

The 4 small copper plates with vines and grapes.

Proof in black ink discarded.

Proof in green and purple discarded.

  The first of the 2 engravings I presented is tinted with various colors, with quite " veil".  Apollo appears only with a slight aura and, near Apollo, the glass and the bottle gain importance.

Etching, aquatint and a bunch tattooed in a collage.

  I put the bunch of grapes to indicate that "the bacchic/dionysian" fascinates Apollo, but now, if I had to press more proofs, i wouldn't add it, it would seem to my an extra.  
  I prefer the choise I did in the second engraving to express the same idea.

  While I was doing color tests for the vines I began to fantasize about the idea of multiplying the stripses of vines coloured with different intensities to create a more "dreamlike" (?) environment.

Tests with chosen colors

Apollo invaded by the Dionysian, printed test

  And this is the selected engraving:

Bacchus and Apollo

  I stay with a sentence of Cavafis I read the other day in an article on the current situation in Greece. "The fact that we have reduced to pieces their statues and we have dragged them away from their temples, it does not mean that the gods are dead".


Catalog of the contest: http://www.esdir.eu/Upload/Externos/catalogo-VII-Vivanco/

A sheet for Javier

Details:

The signature:

Cushion cover for Beatriz

  I was commissioned by Beatriz to paint a cushion cover. I did it almost as if it were an extra page of my albums.

I also copied the words of a vers of the song "Semilla negra" by Radio Futura:

                   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iqVgsKr9v8&list=RD2iqVgsKr9v8#t=0

Details:

Pepe's double portrait.

In the last weeks of 2013 I painted a symbolic double portrait of my friend José Javier from photos. It's an acrylic painting on wood.

If the ancient Roman artists carved the heads of their emperors and used bodies lent as models for the rest of the picture, why couldn't I use such a licence? Pepe's body is Vertumnus' body, that Pontormo painted in the villa in Poggio a Caiano for the Medici.

 

Vertumnus is an etruscan god who protects the fields and presides over the changing of the seasons. Pontormo painted him as an old peasant.

One of the facets I wanted to reflect was Pepe's love of the land (the land also as roots, as origin and, therefore, a symbol of the mother) and his generosity (which so often takes the form of gifts of fruit and flowers from his fields and his country), hence the choice of the character of Pontormo (whom I greatly admire).

Another facet, his passion for art, but also his rejection of any kind of intellectual pomposity or pedantry, which arouse in him an immediate reaction of mockery or irony (I wonder what he will think of these paragraphs!). For that I painted the background image, taken from a photo in which he appears in that pose with a bronze sculpture at the entrance of a museum in Toulouse.

Decorated closet

Some details:

The mythological "ego" and the temporal "ego".