BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
The tea brand. The nightclub. The paella.
The dancer known as the “Pearl of Seville.”
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
Carmencita is a name synonymous with the florid, proud and fanciful folklore of Spain expressed through the image of a colorful dancer. Castenets please! Flowers tossed at her feet, swirling skirt dizzying and brilliant.
While the famous dancer named Carmecita whom most Spaniards are familiar with was born in 1868 and was painted by John Singer Sargent (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and William Merrit Chase (The Met, New York) among other notable painters, her image is less that of a person than of an archetype for mural painters Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro, who were both born in the mid 1990s.
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
Their new collaboration on a long wall in Sant Feliú is an opportunity to paint an image on the street that is impressionist and classical, and then to almost turn it on its head.
“Neither of us know the figure in the foreground, and it does not really matter except to know that she was connected to the world of entertainment and that the public admired her,” they tell us.
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
The image is compelling, ebullient and a bit of a mystery – even more so as it has been rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise along the sidewalk of this busy street.
“We decided to represent the figure horizontally because it is a perspective to which we are not accustomed and it is shocking,” they say.
Clearly it is an unusual presentation and interpretation of the image of Carmencita and perhaps it is a furtherance of the concept of a street “intervention”.
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)
Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro created this painting in conjunction with Contorno Urbano, 12+1 of Sant Feliú, organized in part with Kaligrafics.
