A SENSUAL AND VERY PARTICULAR APPREHENSION OF THE VISIBLE

Jorge Barrote, who lives and works in Lisbon, teacher and visual artist, acquired his training at IADE, ARCO and the National Society of Fine Arts.  Your journey since 2015 is: marked by a figuration with a fantastic and narrative character, inspired by surrealism, the occult and alchemy. With a notable career also in the advertising field, he was recently distinguished with the 2024 Career Award by the Creativity Club of Portugal.

We sense in his work the dialogue with great classics of literature such as Ovid's metamorphoses (transfiguration of men and mythological gods into animals, trees, rivers or stones), and with references from Western culture and painting such as Tiziano's Rapture of Europa (1562) or Goya's Caprichos . It is fed by the myths and themes and founding symbols of the imagination, such as Eve, the serpent, evoking Paradise, the Bull, resonance of the Minotaur, the tree, symbol par excellence of the world. knowledge and alchemical metamorphosis and the sun, active and masculine principle of a fundamental hermetic duality.

The artist has been developing a very personal mixed technique using charcoal, wood and wood. watercolor, pastel and watercolor; graphite (...). Symbol with the title “∞”, a symbol of infinity in some cultures, takes us to the cross-section of a tree with its spiraling circles from where new flowers seem to sprout that reach up to the top of the mountain. to heaven, combining the various cosmic levels and affirming the ascending vocation of living forms. 

Maria João Fernandes

AICA - International Association of Art Critics