Lita Cabellut

LITA CABELLUT (Sariñena, Huesca, 1961).
"The bullfighter and Goya's dog", 2003.
Mixed media on canvas.
Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 120 x 80 cm.

The bullfighter's face is treated in Lita Cabellut's imaginary as an emotional territory. Through the rough drawing, the texture and the stain, Cabellut reveals the vulnerability of the character. Instead of glorifying the bullfighter, she humanizes him. One can see the blurred, dejected face, almost like a wounded skin, which contrasts with the traditional and proud image of the bullfighter.

In the lower right corner of the portrait, between the cracks of the earthy background, emerges the spectral figure of a dog, barely hinted at, as if slowly emerging from a mass of sand. Its body is incomplete, submerged in a sea of ochre, sienna and gray tones, and only the looming head is reminiscent of Goya's iconic half-buried dog. There are no defined contours: the animal is diluted in the pictorial matter as if it were part of the terrain itself, more soul than flesh. It is a veiled homage to Goya's black painting. Cabellut uses layers of paint and craquelure that simulate the passage of time, as if the character were emerging from the material.

Of gypsy origin, Lita Cabellut was born in the small town of Sariñena, in Huesca, in a family with serious dysfunctionalities. Abandoned by her parents, she was raised by her grandmother in the city of Barcelona. Las Ramblas, the Boqueria market, the Port Vell and the Plaza Real, places full at the time of outsiders, artists and show business personalities but also tourists, were the scene of her childhood, marked by dyslexia and the need, at times, to beg. The death of her grandmother when she was only ten years old led to her internment in an orphanage, where, at the age of thirteen, she was adopted by an upper-class Catalan family. The paintings of Goya, Velázquez, Ribera and Rembrandt, discovered during visits to the Prado Museum, revealed her artistic vocation and in 1978 the artist held her first exhibition at the Masnou Town Hall. In 1982 she moved to Holland with her family, where she studied with a scholarship at the Gerrit Rietveld art academy until 1984. The painting of the great Dutch baroque masters was essential in the construction of her art, not so much in terms of style as technique. The artist works both oil on canvas and drawing on paper, sculpture, photography, visual poem or video art. Sometimes her works assume some aspects of the Italian "buon fresco", or she adds to her oil paintings a crackle effect that produces a strong plastic, visual impact. His work abounds in portraits, where the strong influence of Rembrandt, Francis Bacon or Jackson Pollock can be seen, all of them characterized by the expressiveness of the stroke and the disfigurement of reality, seeking to reflect the inner tearing of his models. Reflecting violence, sordidness, cruelty, which are sometimes hidden under a superficial layer of glamour, under an evanescent and ephemeral beauty, is one of his main objectives. Her work is grouped in collections or series, such as the one dedicated to Frida Kahlo or A Portrait of Human Knowledge (2012), where she effigies some of the most significant characters in the world of culture and science of the last 150 years, from Stravinsky to Marie Curie, Billy Holiday or Federico García Lorca. The artist has participated in numerous exhibitions, both solo and group, in major cities such as New York, Dubai, Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Venice, Monaco and Seoul. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, such as the Gypsy Culture Award for Painting and Plastic Arts from the Institute of Gypsy Culture, in 2011. She is also one of the most sought-after living artists in the current art market. In 2015 Artprice magazine included her in 333rd place, in its list of 500 most sought-after contemporary artists, placing her only behind Miquel Barceló and Juan Muñoz as far as Spanish artists are concerned.