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Pedro Paricio: Nine Portraits In Detail Pedro Paricio: Nine Portraits In Detail
17 June 2024

Pedro Paricio: Nine Portraits

In Detail
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Exhibited for the first time outside of the artist’s native Canary Islands, Pedro Paricio’s Nine Portraits hangs in 海角社区’s current exhibition In Plain SightIn the series Paricio reimagines celebrated paintings from across art history with a distinctly contemporary approach.
 
Discover more about the Spanish artist below.
 
If you are interested in adding to your collection speak to an art consultant today - info@halcyongallery.com
'Art is an endless pursuit, and the genre of portraiture, steeped in history, offers a profound exploration of the human...
Pedro Paricio, The Wind, 2023, Acrylic on linen, 100 x 81 cm / Tamara de Lempicka, Girl with Gloves, 1929. Oil on plywood, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris
'Art is an endless pursuit, and the genre of portraiture, steeped in history, offers a profound exploration of the human experience which always seems to ask ‘Who are we?’. With Nine Portraits the focus lies on women, as I aim to elevate the central role that women have played in the arts, both as subjects on canvas and as artists themselves, reclaiming their mastery alongside some of the most renowned masters.' - Pedro Paricio
 
Through this series of portraits, Pedro Paricio continues his career-long investigation into art-historical traditions, exploring how he can appropriate motifs, gestures and expressions before developing and incorporating them into his unique, contemporary visual language. Paricio transforms expressive moments, represented in portraits by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Mary Cassatt and Artemisia Gentileschi, into lively designs with a Pop Art feel. By removing the faces from the portraits that have inspired him, he removes their individuality, so that the 17th-century portrait becomes a representation of universal humanity; their gestures are transformed into generalised human emotions and experiences.
 
With Paricio’s truly contemporary approach to representation, the expressions conveyed by his characters are ambiguous enough so that the viewer completes the artwork, with their own interpretation. As we look at works such as The Golden Thread, Paricio invites us to project ourselves onto the canvas. Whilst the woman can be interpreted as expressing piety, looking up to the heavens, and beating her chest in obedience to God, she could also be interpreted as being in a state of shock, rocking backwards and instinctively shielding herself with her arms from the object that has caught her off guard. Similarly in The Wind, the figure is captured tilting her hat which could be interpreted as a gesture of greeting or simply as a way of keeping it from being blown away in a breeze.
 
With this dialogue, he continues a long tradition of appropriation and reinvention in the history of painting. Iconic examples of...
Pedro Paricio, Blue Portrait, 2023, Acrylic on linen, 100 x 73 cm / Pablo Picasso, Woman with a Helmet of Hair, 1904. Gouache on tan wood pulp board. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

With this dialogue, he continues a long tradition of appropriation and reinvention in the history of painting. Iconic examples of this include Caravaggio’s Michelangelo-inspired Crucifixion of St Peter and Andy Warhol’s screenprinted Last Supper, after Leonardo da Vinci. Picasso was a particularly strong advocate for the practice of appropriation, leading to his presumed authorship of the maxim ‘great artists steal’.

Famously, Picasso’s Las Meninas reimagined Diego Velasquez’s Spanish national treasure with the same title. The monumental impact that Picasso has had on Paricio’s work is, in part, a symptom of their shared approach to ‘stealing’ from art history as a part of the process of creating original artwork. The contemporary artist explained in 2018, in anticipation for the opening of an exhibition which displayed his work alongside Picasso’s:

‘In my home island of Tenerife, we have a saying about our big volcanic peak, Mount Teide: no matter how hard you try to get away from it, Teide is always still there. And it’s the same, I’ve ultimately come to realise, for me as an artist with Picasso. He’s always there … He is my Teide’.

 

Ironically, the parallels that Paricio’s portraits draw with the original works emphasise what is distinct about his style and contemporary...
Pedro Paricio, The Gold Thread, 2023, Acrylic on linen, 81 x 65 cm / Artemisia Gentileschi, Penitent Magdalene, 1616 鈥 1618. Oil on canvas. Pitti Palace, Florence

Ironically, the parallels that Paricio’s portraits draw with the original works emphasise what is distinct about his style and contemporary art in general. Today, painting does not serve the function of creating an illusion of a real world beyond a canvas. In our time, paintings are about emotion, texture and expressing a unique perspective.

As we consider the parallel that can be drawn between Gentileschi’s portrait of Penitent Magdalene and Paricio’s Faith, we are invited to meditate on how the function of art has changed. Gentileschi’s expression of piety, delivered through her naturalistic, fleshy and three-dimensional portrayal of Mary Magdalene is transformed into multi-faceted and two-dimensional plane that, when combined with contrasting colours, contains a lively, rhythmical quality. The austere portrait delivering a religious message is transformed into something energetic, fun and open to interpretation.

Hanging in the exhibition In Plain Sight, Paricio's paintings explore the central theme - how artists take inspiration from the...
Pedro Paricio, The Straw Hat, 2023, Acrylic on linen, 73 x 54 cm / Mary Cassatt, Child in a Straw Hat, 1886. Oil on canvas

Hanging in the exhibition In Plain Sight, Paricio's paintings explore the central theme - how artists take inspiration from the everyday - in a very unique way. The artist takes priceless works of art and removes the identity of these figures, replacing their faces with bright, kaleidoscopic patterns.

These individuals are presented as universal humanity; their poses become familiar to what we see, displaying the actions and gestures that we recognise in the people around us. Paricio’s dialogue with art history highlights our shared humanity which transcends historical periods.

 

If you are interested in adding to your collection, speak to an art consultant today info@halycongallery.com

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