Gabriel Portoles Ascaso

religious praying Tempera and gold leaf on panel painting

c.1980

Huesca Pyrenees has been giving shape to what he studied at the Llotja School in Barcelona, ​​specifically drawing, and then the polychromy that he learned with Jordi Alumá. Over time it has been renewed, not only in the forms, which would be the most natural, but also in the materials, in the technical elements that it has used and that it uses, such as that specialty that it has made its own, tempering egg on board, an expressive mode that began in the 1960s and continues. He has exhibited frequently, both in our country and in France, Germany and the United States, where his technique is highly appreciated, with which he achieves clean, soft lighting surfaces, impeccably executed, with tones and transparencies that touch the genius, and, of course, very personal, although the drawing, perfect in the form of execution, is based on the classics of the great centuries of painting. Graceful, ethereal, almost spiritual female figures, with their slightly bluish flesh, powerful gazes, elegant nudes at times, ample clothing at others, and backgrounds with natural elements, flowers or oriental rhythms. His works have a peculiar baroque air, which is usually developed in successive superimpositions. He also stands out in some balanced still lifes, careful in their composition on different planes, which allows the color to be broken down in a very personal and almost unique way for this veteran artist. All this allows him to achieve a diction expressed with his own voice, sensitive lyricism and the good work of a master. His works are, without a doubt, instantly identifiable and unrepeatable, because there is only one Gabriel Portolés. Reaching environments of great sensitivity, as if the sun were penetrating through the walls of an old cathedral through the luminous and brightly colored glass. In these canvases, both the lyricism of a poet of brushes and the master technique of a master of the language of shapes and color stand out.