I like very much art, mostly paintings, and I love to paint! However, my style is completely figurative, and it is hard for me to paint abstract.

Looking at the history of art, I think people just got tired of the perfect representation of art!

If you look to the first paintings, they are mostly religious, given the Church was the first big patron of arts. These very first paintings do not even represent very well the reality, I mean, they do not respect proportions (we see many times small bodies with huge heads, or very small hands), nor perspective (the drawing is flat, and not with the 3D illusion). This was because art was not very much developed yet, and it was more a symbol, a representation of a person, which was important for who he/she was, and not because of the painting technique applied by the painter.

Then comes the Renaissance. This is when painting is developed as a form of art: the perspective illusion is developed, the proportion becomes very important, the harmony of the composition of the scene and colours. Also in sculpture, the figures start appearing with volume, separated from the walls.

It is in the Renaissance that painting and drawing is perfected: can you see anything more complex and perfect as the Sistine Chapel? Perfect forms, complex scenes, amazing technique (frescos in a ceiling!), exhaustive exploration on the pigments in order to achieve those amazing colours…

From here on, as the techniques were already developed (in my opinion this was the highest point of the art of painting!), and the best was already achieved, painters started to abuse from that perfection of technique, and everything that is too much, is too much! This is the Baroque period.

If you pay attention, the paintings of this period have really perfect images, proportions, incredibly shiny colours… but lots of scenes in one canvas, too much details, colours too intense… golden frames, extremely sculptured… this is the Rococo, where everything is just too much, and people got tired of it.

Even today, when you see a Rococo piece in a museum it is usually beautiful! But if you had it at your home, you would get tired of it really fast! And like this are Versailles, some Russian palaces, all the opulence of the 18^th century.

After this period, the history of Europe suffered lots of revolutions, end of monarchies and birth of republics… and in art we see a drastic simplification of almost everything – this is when the abstract art appears.

I look at the Abstracts from those days and I see a freedom and a negation of all that opulence from the Rococo which seems to have represented the life of those who fell down in those days. Art becomes an expression of a sentiment (a revolution, in this case), and a painting is not used anymore to be a beautiful piece in the living room, but a way to express an opinion.

And it is in the 20^th century when you see the modern art appearing, it is no longer the perfection of the drawing, the proportions, the colours, the composition of the scenes that matter, but the idea or the feeling that is behind that.

And that is why I usually say that, nowadays, art is not always beautiful. Its purpose is no longer the beauty, but something else. A painter does not have to be a star in the drawings or controlling colour…

I’m not saying that nowadays painters are bad “performers”. I’m just pointing that the purpose of art changed along the years.

And where do I fit in this big world? Well, I’m still classic, completely figurative, and I like it :) although I’m sorry that sometimes people do not appreciate it just because they think that what is not “modern art” is old fashioned :(