Teran

TERÁN (Chile, 1974).
"The exchange of Juan Gris", series Fantasies of Picasso, 2024.
Oil on canvas.
Attached certificate issued by the artist.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 162 x 130 cm.
In this painting by Terán, we observe a representation of Pablo Picasso from a posterior perspective, while he holds a framed work with both hands and tries to hang it on a white wall, on whose base rests another painting. The scene, resolved with a refined contemporary realism, presents an evident conceptual game between the represented figure, Picasso, iconic founder of cubism, and the works he manipulates, clearly inspired by the style of the Spanish painter Juan Gris, one of his main contemporaries and maximum exponents of synthetic cubism.
The composition stands out for the contrast between the monochromatic, almost sculptural treatment of the character's body, and the lively and fragmented chromatism of the cubist works, with their geometric shapes, paper cut-outs, musical instruments and superimposed planes. The scene thus establishes a visual and symbolic dialogue between tradition and appropriation, between the iconic author and his aesthetic interlocutors. The use of the figure of Picasso does not only respond to a biographical quotation, but functions as a meta-pictorial device: Picasso, here converted into a subject and not only an author, appears in the act of contemplating and arranging the cubist legacy, of which he was both protagonist and heir.
A Chilean artist living in Spain, with a degree in Fine Arts, Manuel Terán has developed his creative work in the field of plastic arts and new technologies applied to art. Since he became known in 1995 at the Salón de Otoño del Círculo de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile, he has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows and fairs in Latin America and Europe. He has received awards such as the Real Academia de San Carlos de Valencia (2004).