PABLO SYCET

Although the emotional resources that motivated this exhibition by Pablo Sycet (Gibraleon, Huelva, 1953) at Galería Rafael Ortiz can be traced back to a recent trip to Brazil, both to his stay in Curitiba, Brasilia and Sao Paulo and in its prolegomena and consequences, the real origin of this series of paintings dates back to half a century ago, when the poet Juan de Loxa gave Sycet a copy of ‘La realidad y el deseo’, by Luis Cernuda, as a present during Sycet’s first visit to his city. Sycet was just a young boy who dreamed of being the painter he is today, and now remembers:

“It is a book of the Mexican collection Tezontle, because at that time this work was banned by Franco’s censorship, which gave it an unexpected value in those times, and still does, almost five decades later. And, out of all the poems it contains, ‘Jardín antiguo’ was the one that caught my senses to obsession. I read it so many times that I almost memorized it. A couple of notebooks with notes on this poem must be lost in some corner of my workshop”

This is how ‘Jardín antiguo’ arose from the urgent need to retake that old desire to paint these twelve works expressly conceived for the courtyard of the Rafael Ortiz Gallery. Some of these works refer to corners of this courtyard, for its proximity to street Aire and the ancient garden with Roman ruins at the end of the street, which suggested a sort of metaphor in which the typographic elements that appear in these paintings are the Cernudian plants of the evoked garden.

To close the circle of this Cernudian and vegetal fantasy, the catalog published for this exhibition includes a text by Antonio Rivero Taravillo, author of the biography of Luis Cernuda, in a numbered and signed edition that includes an original illustration by the painter.