Juan Barjola

(Torre de Miguel Sesmero, Badajoz, 1919 – Madrid, 2004)

Burladero

1987

oil on canvas

200 x 110 cm

Inv. no. 2523

BBVA Collection Spain



His self-taught training gave Juan Barjola an unmistakably personal style, close to the expressionism of artists like Willem de Kooning (1909-1997) and Francis Bacon (1909-1992). Borrowing inspiration from the dwarfs of Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), the witches sabbaths of Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), the tenebrismo of José Gutiérrez Solana (1886-1945) and the  
 of Antonio Saura (1930-1998), Barjola is widely recognised as one of the most important 20th century Spanish artists.

In the late 1970s colour started to win out over the figure, as in the case of this piece from his series Palcos, where the silhouettes are blurred to allow for an expansion of colour. In the early 1980s Barjola softened both his colouring and his forms. Pinks, ochres, greens, blues and yellows made an entrance into his palette, with the painter relinquishing the pathos of his erstwhile tragic and painful works to give way to a much more positive and lyrical phase.

From a formal perspective, the vagueness of the contours makes it impossible to determine the actual number of characters depicted or which limbs belong to each one. The mere representation of eyes, nose and mouth, simplified to the maximum, is what enables the spectator to detect the presence of people behind a balcony or a burladero, the protective barrier in a bullring, reduced to a simple monochrome plane.