A breath of fresh art

A UNIQUE presentation of the works of Spanish artist, Cristina Duclos, is currently on display in Madrid commemorating over 40 years of an illustrious career.

Although she is a renowned portrait artist with several works commissioned from Spanish personalities or paintings of her family, it is her love of nature which provides the main theme of her paintings. She transmits onto her canvases an incredible freshness and fusion of colour in flowers and plants ranging from almond trees, orchids, magnolias, anemones, iris and poppies.

She has developed a style rich in fantasy using vibrant colours to convey a fairy tale world where everything seems innocent, beautiful, happy and serene. In both her oil paintings and watercolours she has become a master at harmonising colours using both dark and light backgrounds  to project a “joie de vivre.” There is a distinct Japanese influence apparent in several of her works.

What makes her art so original is the concept of splitting the canvas into separate sections giving the paintings the appearance of a puzzle within a single frame. More recently she has turned her attention to sculpture, again with nature predominant, producing large bronze figures of trees, leaves, plants and species of insects. All her sculptures possess a remarkable attention to detail whether it is the branches, buds or large scale insects. 

Cristina Duclos was born in Buenos Aires. Her father was Spanish and her mother French. When she was five the family moved to Madrid and she began to study art from an early age. During the space of 40 years she has travelled the world with a preference to displaying her works as sole artist in private galleries.

One of her first major exhibitions was in Bordeaux followed by Rio de Janeiro and over the years her works have been displayed at the Grand Palais in Paris, the Portal Gallery in London and Vista Gallery in New York. The exhibition to acknowledge her contribution to contemporary Spanish art since 1973 is at the Casa de Vacas cultural centre, appropriately located in the RetiroPark in the centre of Madrid. It was inaugurated by Madrid’s Mayor, Ana Botella, and runs for an Autumn season.

1: The artist beside her life size bronze sculpture of a scarecrow.

2: Oil painting of Orchids divided into sections like a puzzle

3: Portrait of the Duchess of Alba, Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, and daughter Eugenia (1981)

(c)peterfieldman

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