Bullfight 1945

Robert Vale Faro made this print, ‘Bullfight’ in 1945, and what strikes me is its incredible, teeming energy. The composition is densely packed, filled with these looping lines that build form and suggest movement. It's all in black and white, allowing the intricate patterns to really pop, and the textures to come to the fore. There's a push-pull between the figures and the ground; a figure emerges only to then dissolve again. Faro is using the stuff of dreams to construct this bullfight. Look at the face in the upper left, it is both there, but not quite. Faro lets us know that it is there, but his focus is on the feeling that the bullfight invokes, as opposed to a literal representation. This reminds me of the work of Forrest Bess, another artist who delved into the subconscious, using art as a way to explore inner worlds. This piece shows how art can embrace the ambiguous, allowing for endless interpretations rather than settling on one fixed meaning.