Museu del Càntir of Argentona presents an exhibition of the artist Didier Lourenço, with his intimate and imaginative lithographs based on the human being and his emotions, where textures and colors stand out
Fa Lourenço
Lourenço does not tell stories, he infects states of mind. His ubiquitous protagonists, sometimes on a sofa, sometimes on a bicycle, reveal fullness. The daily plenitude of those who inhabit the present, the here and now.
In front of him, it is not necessary for us to wonder who this girl is who stares back at us, free of worries; We know that we are ourselves inside.
The girl's face, as well as many of the elements that are repeated in Lourenço's works, are the result of a slow distillation. And I'm not just talking about the evolution of this author's work, I'm talking about the history of contemporary art. As Newton wrote: "If I have been able to see further, it is because I climbed on the necks of giants."
The face of the "Lourenço girl" is the son of Picasso's synthetic cubism, his treatment of color - how great, the Scarlet Red Titan! - contains the joie de vivre and philosophy of a Matisse filtered by David Hockney. His extraordinary sense of composition - figures slightly shifted to the right - is heir to Malevich's suprematism, the feline relationship wanes in Balthus, and depth of field is heir to Cézanne, the first painter to renounce the artifices of perspective to adapt to the two-dimensionality of the fabric.
We could continue to enumerate the plastic DNA of an artist who, like all artists, has not appeared by spontaneous generation. The most interesting thing, however, are the elements that make it so particular and, at the same time, universal.
Let's look at its urban crowds: people who go from here to there without looking at each other, some on foot, others by bicycle, there are those who walk the dog. They are geometrized figures, little personalized, each one goes for it ... and yet it is a kind work. Being able to walk around the city at your leisure, without submitting to the scrutiny of others - as happens in some towns - is an act of freedom. In fact, modern democracies base freedom on the right to privacy. And yet a detail that is not free: in one of these crowds, the "girl from Lourenço" passes by on a bicycle and looks back at us. It is a resource already used by the Italian Renaissance to establish a connection with the viewer.
And you may wonder, what is intimate and personal about riding a bike? Lourenço clarifies it for me: "If I look at the world when I go on foot, everything is too slow and boring. When I go by car I cannot enjoy the landscape. For me, the ideal speed is when you go by bicycle".
I try to define the feelings that Lourenço's work produces in me, and only the words of Pepín Bello, Federico García Lorca's great friend, come to mind: "When Federico spoke, it was neither cold nor hot, it was Federico." It is something very similar.
Ricard Mas (member of the International Association of Art Critics)
Museu del Càntir of Argentona presents an exhibition of the artist Didier Lourenço, with his intimate and imaginative lithographs based on the human being and his emotions, where textures and colors stand out
Fa Lourenço
Lourenço does not tell stories, he infects states of mind. His ubiquitous protagonists, sometimes on a sofa, sometimes on a bicycle, reveal fullness. The daily plenitude of those who inhabit the present, the here and now.
In front of him, it is not necessary for us to wonder who this girl is who stares back at us, free of worries; We know that we are ourselves inside.
The girl's face, as well as many of the elements that are repeated in Lourenço's works, are the result of a slow distillation. And I'm not just talking about the evolution of this author's work, I'm talking about the history of contemporary art. As Newton wrote: "If I have been able to see further, it is because I climbed on the necks of giants."
The face of the "Lourenço girl" is the son of Picasso's synthetic cubism, his treatment of color - how great, the Scarlet Red Titan! - contains the joie de vivre and philosophy of a Matisse filtered by David Hockney. His extraordinary sense of composition - figures slightly shifted to the right - is heir to Malevich's suprematism, the feline relationship wanes in Balthus, and depth of field is heir to Cézanne, the first painter to renounce the artifices of perspective to adapt to the two-dimensionality of the fabric.
We could continue to enumerate the plastic DNA of an artist who, like all artists, has not appeared by spontaneous generation. The most interesting thing, however, are the elements that make it so particular and, at the same time, universal.
Let's look at its urban crowds: people who go from here to there without looking at each other, some on foot, others by bicycle, there are those who walk the dog. They are geometrized figures, little personalized, each one goes for it ... and yet it is a kind work. Being able to walk around the city at your leisure, without submitting to the scrutiny of others - as happens in some towns - is an act of freedom. In fact, modern democracies base freedom on the right to privacy. And yet a detail that is not free: in one of these crowds, the "girl from Lourenço" passes by on a bicycle and looks back at us. It is a resource already used by the Italian Renaissance to establish a connection with the viewer.
And you may wonder, what is intimate and personal about riding a bike? Lourenço clarifies it for me: "If I look at the world when I go on foot, everything is too slow and boring. When I go by car I cannot enjoy the landscape. For me, the ideal speed is when you go by bicycle".
I try to define the feelings that Lourenço's work produces in me, and only the words of Pepín Bello, Federico García Lorca's great friend, come to mind: "When Federico spoke, it was neither cold nor hot, it was Federico." It is something very similar.
Ricard Mas (member of the International Association of Art Critics)