Lita Cabellut

LITA CABELLUT (Sariñena, Huesca, 1961).
Untitled. 2026.
Mixed media on special cardboard.
Signed and dated on the reverse.
Measurements: 39 x 30 cm; 53 x 42 cm (frame).

This work condenses, within an intimate format, some of the most recognizable features of Lita Cabellut’s mature artistic language: the centrality of the portrait, the intense treatment of the surface, and the progressive fragmentation of the image. The female figure emerges amid numerous vertical elements that disrupt her continuity and make the face the primary focal point of a composition situated between figuration and abstraction.

The artist contrasts the precision of the features—especially the gaze and the intensely red lips—with an environment of an eroded appearance, constructed through layers, crackling, scraping, and areas of fragmented material. The vertical bands, distributed in whites, yellows, reds, and neutral tones, introduce a discontinuous rhythm that animates the entire surface and makes the image seem to simultaneously reveal and conceal itself. This dialogue between representation, materiality, and fragmentation constitutes one of the most characteristic threads of her recent work.

Trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and based in the Netherlands, Lita Cabellut has built much of her international reputation on a personal reinterpretation of the portrait, a genre in which she combines an intense psychological presence with cracked, eroded surfaces that carry a strong material and pictorial quality. Her career has been recognized through exhibitions at institutions such as the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, the Fundació Vila Casas, and the Goya Museum. In 2021, she was named Artist of the Year in the Netherlands, and in 2024, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona and the title of Commander of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic.