Cristina Batllori

Barcelona, ​​1952

The study of the painter is like a small urban oasis. Different types of sand lie in large transparent boxes, waiting to become part of his paintings. At her side, a repertoire of string rolls awaits the same fate. Batllori is in love with texture, and both materials help her give body to her works. With them he works on his most recent project, the series Sorra, poesia i vida, inspired by the poem If (Si), by Rudyard Kipling.

For more than a decade, Cristina Batllori has been meeting daily with the verses of Kipling. "I have read it hundreds of times, for me, it is a reference of what a person should be in life," he reflects. She decided to take it as a leitmotiv of her work because, as she herself explains, she likes to "give a common thread" to her works, "that have a sense and a coherence".

In the series, Kipling's words are written on the canvas. Along with them, the rope and sand draw spirals that refer to different stages of personal development. "For me, the rope represents life, with it I draw circles, like a marked path, because in life freedom is only relative.The stroke of the strings allows me to evoke moments of greater or lesser solitude, more intense stages and other more reposed, "he says. The artist is a lover of chromatic smoothness - "I almost never use strong colors" - and in her paintings white, creams predominate and, as a counterpoint, gray and black. Few of his works are unique pieces. Most are structured in series of two or four paintings, which allow you to develop the themes better.