1983 - 1985 (2)

BULLFIGHTING

NEPTUNE made the bull of Crete by beating his trident on the island of Crete. Minos, the king of Crete, had promised to sacrifice the first bull he found to the King of the Seas, and he found the one which Neptune had made.

He liked it so much that he cheated and sacrificed another. The angry god made the bull mad and subduing it became the sixth labour of Hercules, who captured it and took it before the King. As the bull was consecrated to Neptune, the King set it free and it continued to cause damage in the region of Marathon. Finally, Theseus caught it alive and sacrificed it before the altar of Apollo.

Jupiter also became a bull to steal Europa.
The bull is a mythical figure represented throughout the centuries in the most diverse latitudes and the bull-symbol can be found in literature, religion, sculpture or painting.

Various cultures have given this animal divine faculties. There are bulls from cave paintings to Picasso. In Mediterranean cultures, the figure of the bull has developed as a constant in the history of its art, and lately in Spain representations of the bull in painting have almost been confined to the bullfight, in a type of painting known generally as tauromachy.
But after Picasso, what is there left to painting tauromachy? How can a type of painting which deals with a savage, primitive fiesta, one which struggles to survive, renew itself?

Romà Panadès is an answer.
The first surprise is that his paintings are not really of tauromachy, which comes from the Greek tauros-bull and makhe-fight, because that is a term which relates to the bullfight while there is no aggressiveness in the work of Panadès.

The artist fills the bull-bullfighter relationship with love and the bullring with poetry. But not a Lorca-like poetry. It is a poetry from behind the barriers, from a silent part of the ring not contaminated by fanaticism.

Panadès paints the bullfight with the same peacefulness and sweetness as a afternoon in Valldemosa and it is in this rapture with the rhythm of the fiesta that he shows the noble and magic parts of this play between man and horned beast.

I am sure that if Panadès organised a bullfight not a single drop of blood would fall in the ring.
His work is beautiful, don’t miss the exhibition ( Lluc Fluxá).

E. Suarez. MAJORCA DAILY BULLETIN, Tuesday, October 22, 1985.

TAUROMAQUIA

When something surprises you, it is better to surrender to it rather than ask yourself why. By coincidence, Romà Panadès lived for a long time in Seville and, apart from being enthralled by the city, one day the Maestranza surprised him as a setting for a festival that is both myth and ritual simultaneously. I do not think that it could have been more emotive. The light of the Maestranza is joined in the most harmonious way and there, in its arena, where there is both sun and moon, the sacrifice of the bull takes place. The pictures that Romà Panadès paints with the subject matter of bulls respond to the mystery of man as an element in the ritual game of the sacrifice of the animal. They express a religious act. See how there is no anecdote. It is the man who, dressed for the sacrifice, becomes a powerful presence, as the executor of the ritual. Matador costumes of an incredible Baroquism. Picadors seen from behind who move with aplomb on their horses. The torero, in carrying out the rites, loves the bull. The nuptial rites are carried out, key to the origin of the festival (according to some anthropologists). In one painting, the face of a child torero is jumbled up with the embrace of a totally non-aggressive bull. The light of this painting is the light of the moon. It has a peaceful, sweet beauty, which is at the same time profoundly mysterious. It could serve as an item of adoration. One could beg for a miracle from it. For Romà Panadès bullfighting rings are more mocking than risky: the painter shies away from blood and shies away, perhaps, from the sun. The ritual elements are those that really attract him and inspire him: he wants to place them on record. The spectacle of the bulls is of no more than passing interest to Romà Panadès; what really attracts him is the myth, and he does his best to reflect this through his paintings, of an irrational Baroque and an attractive and powerful mystery; in which the ritual is more moon than sun. He experiences the bull festival as the symbolic universe of popular culture.

MARIANO DE LA CRUZ, January 1985.