Antonio Banderas

ANTONIO BANDERAS (Málaga, 1960).
Untitled, from the series "Secretos en negro", Málaga, 2010.
Digital photography on paper on Dibond.
Series exhibited at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid in 2010.
Without signature.
Measurements: 100 x 75 cm.

In this image, belonging to the series "Secretos en negro", Antonio Banderas articulates a scene full of irony, theatricality and popular symbolism, where the role play and gestural exaggeration are combined with a studied direction of light and a restrained palette that accentuates the visual drama.

The scene portrays a couple in a clearly caricatural key. He, looking like a rustic peasant with a jovial expression, laughs openly while holding his wife over his shoulder. Her attitude contrasts sharply: her face shows disgust or anger, and she holds a stuffed toy, a detail that accentuates her representation as a capricious, infantilized figure. The emotional disparity between the two -his overflowing joy versus her theatrical pout- generates a playful, almost comic tension that refers to the popular iconography of costumbrista theater or the aesthetics of the esperpento. But this visual farce is articulated on a very refined technical basis: the chiaroscuro is carefully calculated, highlighting the dominant whites of the clothing and skin, and punctuated by strategic points of color -a red flower in the man's buttonhole, her intensely painted lips- that act as visual and symbolic anchors. All of this is cut against the deep black background characteristic of the series, which brings unity, intensity and a dramatic aura to the scene.

Antonio Banderas has developed in parallel to his film career, especially in recent decades, a photographic work that has become known in international exhibitions. "Secrets in black" is the title of the series to which the photograph we are bidding for belongs, a series made up of 23 photographs brimming with theatricality and glamour, in which women appear as independent and empowered. She uses myths and references from literature, painting or opera and linked to Spanish culture such as Carmen, Don Juan Tenorio, The Barber of Seville or Goya's "La Maja Desnuda". From these references, he creates a sensual and elegant atmosphere in an intimate and studied environment. This series could be seen at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid in 2010.

Her work in Secrets on Black is characterized by a theatricalized, minimalist and conceptual staging, in which the body -generally female- becomes a vehicle for the exploration of themes such as desire, the multiplicity of the self and inner silence. The choice of black as a background unifies the series and refers to a symbolically charged space: black as the hidden, the intimate, the unconfessable.