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Video: Sensual Portraits of Virgins Painted on Gold Leaf: Traditions of Icon Painting in the Paintings of Manuel Nunez
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Gold has always been the standard of respectability and luxury. In the past, it was often used by old masters in icon-painting and painting creations. Our contemporaries, painters, continue to use it in their work. So, the brilliance and nobility of the precious metal was taken as a basis American artist Manuel Nunezcreating delightful female portraits. His gallery of portrait painting with the use of gold leaf is sure to impress and impress even the discerning viewer.
Plunging into the history of painting, everyone will remember the shining canvases of Gustav Klimt, the famous Austrian artist and graphic artist, who widely used this precious metal in his work. His most famous works - "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", "The Kiss", which conquered the world with romance and sensuality of images, belong to the "golden period" of the artist's work. Klimt painted with gold paints and worked with the finest sheet of gold leaf. This technique gave the works a decorative fabulousness and luxury. And largely thanks to her, he became world famous.
In turn, Manuel Nunez, based on the experience of his predecessor, developed his own style in the genre of portraiture, in which he skillfully uses gold-containing paints and the thinnest plates of precious metal. Often, the artist uses the gilded surface as a background on which he paints images in oil. And with paints, which include a mixture of a binder and gold dust, he prescribes important details.
Describing his technique of painting with gold leaf, Manuel says: It is the last quality of precious metal that the artist tries to reveal in his works, creating charming and mysterious female images, both modern and timeless.
It is also worth noting that women in the form of saints in portraits are very symbolic. And, by the way, it is the shine of gold that gives them a certain special mysticism, combining inner strength and fragility, chastity and sensuality, love and passion. All this psycho-emotional background organically coexists within one picture. Just like the soul and body of a person, which are a single whole.
And these, as they say, precious works of art, distinguished by elegance and sophistication, are truly original and distinctive. Their writing technique, manner and composition are very reminiscent of the canvases of the 19th century, which gives them special value.
You probably noticed that some of the master's paintings are literally saturated with Christian symbolism, but this does not at all indicate his religiosity. Nunez began his career as a designer and illustrator, and many of his works are typical examples of modern painting. As a result of long searches, his style is a fusion of European symbolism and art nuveau, generously mixed with purely Spanish religious mysticism. Why Spanish? The artist has Spanish roots …
And in conclusion, I would like to note that the paintings of the American painter incredibly harmoniously combine his creative imagination, the perfection of the noble metal, modern technology, as well as his love for a woman.
A few words about the artist
American artist Manuel Nunez was born in 1956 in sunny California. There he grew up and learned painting. His father was a renowned singer and songwriter who recorded nine albums in Spanish. Manuel grew up from an early age in a creative atmosphere that shaped him as an artist and helped to find direction in his work. Nunez graduated from the College of Art Design Center in Pasadena and the Otis Parsons Institute in Los Angeles. And then, for a decade, he worked as a commercial illustrator and graphic designer in the fashion industry.
Since 1991, the artist has created his own unique style, the hallmark of which is the use of gold leaf. Since then, the master's works have been awarded prizes and awards at many international competitions and forums. The exquisite portraits are purchased by the world's leading galleries and private collectors.
Continuing the topic of innovative techniques created by contemporary artists, read our publication: How a Ukrainian artist came up with a new painting technique, for which he was called "the genius of our time".
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