Figuras en una casa—what a neutral title for so moving a painting! However, instead of wishing to withhold its secret, the painter seems to have chosen this label simply in order to prompt the beholder to figure out its narrative on his own. In a doorway which, as the bell above indicates, is the entrance to a flat, there stand a group of three, who may be brothers and sisters, and whose ages range from perhaps twenty-five to forty. The wall's worn layers of paint, dirt and neglect speak of a past in humble circumstances. In the mirror to the left we discover a lit electric bulb hanging from the ceiling; next to the door there is a switch. Apparently, the three having paid a visit to this vacated flat, so laden with memories, now behold it for a last silent moment. To the left there are the two closed inner shutters of a window, while the daylight, as revealed by the mirror, enters through a window-recess further in. It has a wooden towel hanger, from which what may be an apron is hanging. The beholder must by now have become aware of a fourth person who is both absent and present in the room: the mother. By leaving her out in the mirror, and by extinguishing the lower parts of her figure, the painter has ensured that she is present only in the sense of a phantasm. We may notice as well that the younger of her two sons is looking in her direction. Despite its unassuming title, “People in a House” has become an epitaph to a mother, now present to her loved ones at the moment before they will turn out the light and close the door for good. However, much remains uncertain. There stands her daughter (or her daughter-in-law) with an elegantly strict handbag, and the sons' discreet costumes also suggest that they now belong to a different social stratum. Even if they now recall their mother in the first place as the widow she became, clad in black, her image will remind them of the time when both parents' self-sacrifice gave them their chance in life. The painter's approach is hyper-realistic, as is so often the case nowadays, not least in Spain. However, Antonio Lopez has managed to fill his narrative with something which works of that kind mostly lack: love, gratitude, and the feeling of something irretrievably lost. The three figures are dressed in sombre clothes, and by its twilight, the closed window shutters, and some reconciling highlights as well, the painting attains a structure corresponding to their mood, which is not altogether forlorn. Gentleness pervades the room. The painting measures 85 x 124 cm and is painted on wood. Usually the support matter is of little interest. However, for a painter who has mostly used canvas, his preference here for wood merits interest. Instead of showing traces of the canvas grain, the worn layers of paint on the entrance wall remain smooth, and intentionally or not, he has left some flaws here and there—as if the surface of the painting were to be comparable to the state in this room. The work was carried out during the year when the painter reached the age of 31. Antonio Lopez Garcia was born in 1936 in Tomelloso, near Ciudad Real, and has been oscillating between Madrid and his birth place, for a great part of his life. It is known that his relatives recur often in his paintings. He is matchless among the many Spanish realists, both as a painter, draughtsman and sculptor, internationally acknowledged and cherished by the Marlborough Galleries in New York and London.
Tijdschrift beschrijving