Toreador, 2015

“Toreador” is among the first paintings to open the Corrida series. It was made at a time when the central question became the synthesis of form and the search for a painterly language able to convey the atmosphere of the ritual without resorting to literal description.

The painting is built through a dialogue between intense red and deep black. Overlapping layers of paint gradually reveal the outline of the toreador’s figure, which remains suspended between presence and disappearance. The figure is not a portrait of a particular person but an archetype of a man entering the space of ritual – aware of the risk, the responsibility and the inevitability of confrontation.

The ascetic composition and the deliberate restriction of means direct attention to light, matter and the tension hidden beneath the surface of the painting. The motifs that would develop across the series over the following years are already present here: ritual, memory, the symbolism of red, and the relationship between the human figure, space and gesture.

One of the three paintings that begin the Corrida series.