Barcelona hosts these days one of the great exhibitions of the year: the joint show of Miró and Picasso, two enormous figures of contemporary painting who were also friends. In fact, these are two exhibitions that dialogue; one, at the Museu Picasso and the other, at the Fundació Miró. Two exhibitions conceived by their curators as a single narrative, premeditatedly complementary. On the contrary, that the retrospective that La Pedrera dedicates to Antonio López (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936) coincides with the first solo exhibition of Xevi Solà (Santa Coloma de Farners, Girona, 1969) at the Alzueta Gallery facilities on Seneca Street is a matter of pure chance. Therefore, having been able to relate two artists belonging to different and distant galaxies is the result of pure coincidence. Contemplating these two exhibitions with a few days' difference has been a totally unforeseen and enriching exercise, not because of what López and Solà have in common but precisely because of everything that separates them.
López is a realist painter, with slow, unhurried, and obsessively meticulous production. To create some of the paintings in the La Pedrera exhibition, he set up his easel for fifteen years in the same place and at the same time. The result is large canvases rich in detail, dominated by pastel tones: the hazy blue of the skies and the browns, ochres, and ivory of the urban panoramas that have made him famous. López's work is aptly displayed in dimly lit rooms that generate a sense of peace, contemplation, but also a certain twilight nostalgia.
Solá is the complete opposite. A painter with a fresh and fast stroke. In fact, an artist who currently paints faster than ever precisely to try to capture freshness in each of his works. A creator who, during his university years, discovered Lucian Freud and decided he was going to dedicate himself to psychological portraiture, although he was also seduced by the landscapes of the Fauvists and Matisse's odalisques, and who acknowledges the influences of van Gogh, David Hockney, or Alice Neel.
Solà's most recent work portrays with an explosion of color the surface of a hedonistic and seductive youth, but also and above all hints at a complex, unsettling, and even disturbing interior. Freud's characters seem to look at themselves in the mirror, with a nakedness both physical and psychological that exposes all their miseries and defeats. Solà's characters, we could say, seem to share their own photographs on Instagram, overusing filters to try to look good and hide, with more or less success, wounds, insecurities, and other darker secrets. It seems to me a furiously current way of portraying, of representing and being represented.
I explain to Solà that I went to see his exhibition shortly after seeing López's, and he confirms that he is at the antipodes of the veteran Castilian artist: "If you spend years making a painting, you hide your brushstroke and your mistakes, and the painting loses not only freshness, but also authenticity. A painter's brushstroke is what makes him unique, like calligraphy. Therefore, for me, a fast and direct brushstroke can more clearly explain the painter's way of being." To understand each other: "Picasso's brushstroke speaks of a guy with a lot of character, determined, tough. Van Gogh's or Matisse's brushstrokes are less severe and more sensual...". And he concludes, in case there was any doubt: "Antonio López's brushstroke communicates nothing to me."
I introduce Solà to a friend who accompanies me to his exhibition and, in front of one of his paintings, she comments that it makes you want to know what happened to his characters. In fact, Solà considers himself a storyteller since his beginnings as a cartoonist: "At 16, I drew comics, and now I like to give small clues that somehow configure psychological portraits of characters who chat or keep their secrets." Solà doesn't reveal, he gives clues. That's why his portraits of attractive and enigmatic young people have an undeniable magnetism that seduces as much as it unsettles. "I always look for authentic expressions, and one of the methods I use is police photography because it helps me transmit this melancholy or even resignation," explains Solà, who is defined as the painter of the sad beauty of youth.
"At 16, I drew comics, and now I like to give small clues that somehow configure psychological portraits of characters who chat or keep their secrets"I have been closely following Solà's career for some time, and a couple of years ago, when I was in the midst of writing my latest novel,The Smile of the Dolphins(Columna Edicions, 2023) it occurred to me that I could be writing the story of one of its characters who, by the way, finally ended up appearing on the book's cover.
You can visit Xevi Solà's exhibition Common People at Alzueta Gallery until November 20.