Roberto Rébora

(Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1963)

Las Orozco

1996

tempera on canvas

201 x 191 cm

Inv. no. CFB036

BBVA Collection Mexico



This painting by Roberto Rébora —an unconditional admirer of the mural artist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949)— clearly evinces his talent. The surname in the title alludes in fact to a personal affair, a family dispute around the inheritance left by the artist’s father, whose surnames were Rébora Orozco (not related with the muralist). The three women depicted in the festive circle —the ugly one on the left, the stupid one on the right and the faceless deceiver in the centre—represent his aunts, whose relationship with their nephew suffered as a result of that circumstance.

This tempera painting compiles several of Rébora’s processes, from the narrative plot (family, fraternity, sorority) and technical exquisiteness to the compositional weft that he had been developing, always without bending to prevailing trends. This sardana or Provencal dance of sorts that places the three female figures in levitation is rendered with his signature style. The diffuse and sketchy line instils a quality in the deliberately unfinished painting that invites our gaze to pierce the glazes and let ourselves be carried away by immediate visual feelings. The surface of the work functions as a space of simultaneous tensions between planes: the trio of hopping figures coiling in a circle that connotes jubilation and mutual understanding, while the background is chequered in asymmetric lines and polyhedral angles. The transparent brushstrokes of diluted green, red, yellow and blue colours act as quivering axes in a quasi-calligraphic order, in which the sudden movement of the hand succeeds in retaining the emotion of the instant.

Complex figures of fleeting movements apparently melding in the light define a practice that challenges the beholder’s powers of deduction. Though Rébora transcended the initial influence of José Clemente Orozco, this painting reveals the influence of his fellow countryman, particularly in his period of interior scenes with prostitutes and, indeed, of the veteran Matisse (1869-1954) of Dance.