• d o m i n g o s a r r e y
• features of the spanish woman in the life and work of picasso

• A visual speech Pablo Picasso’s oeuvre underwent a myriad of stylistic changes from his melancholic blue and pink stages to the more gestural work of his later years passing through his infinite cubist variations. This insatiable need for experimentation resulted in an enormous artistic output that only parallels the rivers of ink that art historians, critics, and experts have churned out to try to approach the work, life and motivations of this genius, who is probably the most influential artist of the 20th century. Domingo Sarrey’s exhibition “Features of the Spanish Woman in the Life and Work of Picasso” which is presented here, can be considered as another investigation into the art of the cubist painter, although instead of adding to the discursive body of the written word, Sarrey carries out his enquiry in a series of visual images examining an aspect of Picasso’s work rarely analysed by art historians, that of the representation of the typical anthropological character of “Spanishness” in his depiction of women. Sarrey defends that Picasso’s tastes and ways of portraying his models tend towards the iconic image of certain Iberian women, their gaze, posture, tone, and general defying manner as well as preference in traditional Spanish dress, attributes and ways of applying make up. Instead of developing this argument in a literal narrative, Sarrey makes use of his computing knowledge, digital techniques and visual know-how to present his discourse in a succession of paintings by sometimes exaggerating the master’s classic paintings, sometimes reinterpreting these, and in other cases inventing paintings that could have existed. Scanning the entirety of Picasso’s work, in all his periods and styles from the most figurative to the most abstract, Sarrey finds a type of identikit picture of femininity in which Picasso’s visual preferences may bring forth a “Spanish” character in his work and personal tastes, even in the distance of his French residency. This minute visual analysis of one painter by another is a respectful exercise, which even Picasso himself carried out extensively with several painters, the best known example being his reinterpretation of Velazquez’s “Las Meninas”, which he depicted profusely. Undoubtedly the ideal way of properly describing or trying to understand on the visual should be through visuality itself, for unfortunately, the medium of language recurrently fails to encompass the richness and complexity of images, and more so in Pablo Picasso’s case.

• 13 - 30 November 2007
• El Silo de Hortaleza
• C/ Mar de las Antillas s/n
• Madrid
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