Mario B. Gil

Japanese Art Ukiyo-e Figurative Painting, Woman reading a letter, Edo period

2014

BIOGRAPHY Mario BGil is a self-taught artist who for years has combined his creative activity with his work in the business world, away from commercial art galleries. Man of very diverse interests and great artistic sensitivity, studied Art History and in 2012, a deep interest in oriental art was awakened in him so that he began to study the great masters of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, who had such an influence on the European avant-garde of the late 19th century. The discovery of Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), a key figure in the metropolitan culture of Edo (now Tokyo), and a point of reference in the history of Japanese engraving, meant for Mario a change of course caused by the imperative need to study his images, recreate them and recreate himself in them, incorporating certain changes in both the format and the technique used. The technique used by MBG is very different from that used in engravings with wooden blocks impregnated in inks of intense colors that serve as a model. On a paper of heavy weight and thick texture, Mario BGil outlines with a black pencil, and colors the spaces with pencils and watercolors. Faced with the intensity of color of the prints (already very lost in some of them due to their age and exposure to the sun), their drawings are sifted by the streaky white, due to the thick texture of the paper, showing more lines, soft and warmer tones, giving color to the backgrounds but leaving all the volumes corresponding to the skin blank, thus giving the figures a classic serenity that transcends their oriental character. Between 2014 and 2015, Mario BGil made more than 35 drawings based on the prints selected from the huge amount of work produced by the master Utamaro that shows images of courtesans in different attitudes and poses that highlight the subtle delicacy of oriental feminine beauty. Kitagawa Utamaro was a faithful representative of the tastes of the Japanese bourgeoisie of its time, which had transformed the life of the cities giving birth to a culture parallel to the official and aristocratic. In front of the traditional painting, the stamp arises with images of this new world. The courtesans of the pleasure districts of Edo that Utamaro portrays, do not always appear perfectly dressed to receive the client but are surprised while getting ready, or during the day. He observes them without being seen, and spies on them in their daily and intimate work. All of them are women drawn in a similar style, with elongated faces, straight delicate noses (almost a single line), and other features reduced to a mere suggestion (the mouth, a tiny butterfly of red). The importance that it has had in later European artists (Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Gauguin, Van Gogh ...) has been great and Mario BGil has not been able to escape the recreation of those images so classic and, at the same time, so current, paying clear tribute to its original creator.