Francisco Bores (1898-1972)
Madrid
Madrid
The simplicity of small things and the most delicate colors. An extraordinarily personal view of cubism and the joy of living. All of this and much more defines Francisco Bores, one of the great figures of twentieth century European art.
His presence was fundamental in the second wave of Spanish artists who arrived in Paris in the 1920s, although in his own country he was not really recognized until well into the 70s when aspects of Art that did not fit in with the dominant informalism and social realism were finally valued. There was an explosion of widespread admiration for the intimate character of his images, the absence of Spanish stereotypes, and the joy of his soft chromatics.
Like so many others of his generation, Bores had participated in the intense creative world that radiated from the Student Residence and the intellectuals of the Generation of 1927, before leaving for Paris. Ortega y Gasset, Gerardo Diego, Guillermo de la Torre, García Lorca, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Salvador Dalí... Bores had close relationships with most of them and participated in the “tertulias” (intellectual gatherings) at the famous Pombo and Gijón cafes, where he came into contact with Ultraism. Some of his drawings and woodcuts from this period were illustrations for magazines such as ‘Tobogán’ and ‘España’. They were almost always scenes of daily life in the capital city, with its typical characters and their experiences. Weddings, markets, brothels, idlers, the merry-go-round . . . These same motifs would continue later during his Parisian period, with joyful and flowing drawings that announce a master in the making.
The style of Francisco Bores that we admire today was forged following his close contact with the greatest painters of the first Vanguard: Picasso and Matisse. Of the former, he admired his manner of constructing forms, his classicism, and later his cubist explosion. Matisse, was the joy of living, bright colors and light, his love of lines. Bores harmonizes both of these influences in his work, and goes beyond them. As Juan Ramón Jiménez said, he is also a “synthesis between the plastic inheritance of Braque and that of Cézanne.” Bores himself calls his work, in which he seeks to combine construction and light, as “fruit-painting.”
Still lifes, landscapes, figures . . . Francisco Bores is a painter of tranquillity, of an expanding interior glance. Poetry transformed into painting.
His presence was fundamental in the second wave of Spanish artists who arrived in Paris in the 1920s, although in his own country he was not really recognized until well into the 70s when aspects of Art that did not fit in with the dominant informalism and social realism were finally valued. There was an explosion of widespread admiration for the intimate character of his images, the absence of Spanish stereotypes, and the joy of his soft chromatics.
Like so many others of his generation, Bores had participated in the intense creative world that radiated from the Student Residence and the intellectuals of the Generation of 1927, before leaving for Paris. Ortega y Gasset, Gerardo Diego, Guillermo de la Torre, García Lorca, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Salvador Dalí... Bores had close relationships with most of them and participated in the “tertulias” (intellectual gatherings) at the famous Pombo and Gijón cafes, where he came into contact with Ultraism. Some of his drawings and woodcuts from this period were illustrations for magazines such as ‘Tobogán’ and ‘España’. They were almost always scenes of daily life in the capital city, with its typical characters and their experiences. Weddings, markets, brothels, idlers, the merry-go-round . . . These same motifs would continue later during his Parisian period, with joyful and flowing drawings that announce a master in the making.
The style of Francisco Bores that we admire today was forged following his close contact with the greatest painters of the first Vanguard: Picasso and Matisse. Of the former, he admired his manner of constructing forms, his classicism, and later his cubist explosion. Matisse, was the joy of living, bright colors and light, his love of lines. Bores harmonizes both of these influences in his work, and goes beyond them. As Juan Ramón Jiménez said, he is also a “synthesis between the plastic inheritance of Braque and that of Cézanne.” Bores himself calls his work, in which he seeks to combine construction and light, as “fruit-painting.”
Still lifes, landscapes, figures . . . Francisco Bores is a painter of tranquillity, of an expanding interior glance. Poetry transformed into painting.