Barrio Escalante, San José

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Las Hermanas, by Rafael Fernández. Two identical profiles unfold against an emphatic, almost ceremonial ultramarine blue, establishing a play of reflections that blurs the boundary between two separate identities and a single shared memory.
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Rafael Fernández

Las HermanasInquire about availability

Year
2016
Technique
Oil/Canvas
Dimensions
51 × 41 cm
Status
Inquire about availability
Palette
cobalt blue, petrol blue, flesh pink, golden ochre, sky blue
Brushwork
Opaque layers of oil with textile impastos, filigrees, and geometric glazes

Curatorial analysis

Two identical profiles unfold against an emphatic, almost ceremonial ultramarine blue, establishing a play of reflections that blurs the boundary between two separate identities and a single shared memory. The foreground figure yields her shadow to an immediate replica advancing to the right with the same silent posture. Their faces, rendered in clean, flat flesh tones, are crossed by a bluish mask that veils their gaze and suspends any psychological certainty, endowing them with a hieratic stillness akin to a votive icon or a theatrical apparition.

Above them rises a monumental headdress that defies the scene's gravity. This sculptural coiffure, dense and saturated with petroleum green and cobalt blue pigments, reveals lace-like textures and shelters winged creatures. A golden bird crowned by a subtle circular halo caps the crest, while another yellow avian form seems to nest in the curve of the forehead. These zoomorphic insertions strip the portrait of any earthly grounding, transporting it into an oneiric realm where the female body functions as both landscape and mythical vessel.

The pictorial matter operates through sharply defined tactile contrasts. The opaque density of the background converses with the meticulous filigree of the lower garments, where an ochre and golden mass evokes heavy brocade through stippling and raised relief textures. Toward the right flank, a pale blue avian silhouette floats like a flat wake, balancing the headdress's vertical weight with an almost translucent presence. In Las Hermanas, duality does not confront but accompanies, erecting a poetics of affinity where ornamental beauty guards an impenetrable enigma.

Las Hermanas

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56 works

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