CLASSIC Series

The CLASSIC series is my way of confronting masterpieces—Velázquez, Rubens, El Greco, Goya, Manet, among others—through an exercise in citation with very specific rules. It's not about playing forger by simply duplicating the works: I systematically focus the framing on a single subject, sometimes redefining the center of gravity of the original image.

For example, in the case of Las Meninas by Velázquez, I leave aside the famous play of mirrors to focus on the bust of the Infanta.

I summon these figures onto the canvas to subject them to a shock treatment: hybridization between two iconoclastic paintings or brushstrokes.

I am literally confronted by these masterpieces that have haunted my life as an artist since my drawing classes at the Granada School of Arts. Haven't these figures, with their gaze, challenged every painter for centuries to dare to explore figuration?

My answer is expressed in a physiological metaphor: to advance and grow, one must effectively feed on models, assimilate them—that is, digest them, dissolve them in one's own pictorial juices. Eat so as not to be eaten.