Ballerinas 1955

Curator: Emilio Grau Sala's pastel drawing, "Ballerinas," completed in 1955, immediately strikes me with its somewhat melancholic, dreamlike quality. The hues are muted, and there’s a definite expressive, almost hazy atmosphere created with the pastel medium. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: There’s a palpable sense of work that’s ingrained within its creation. It’s almost expressionistic—the textures created with the pastel feel chalky and coarse. It shows a dedication to revealing the physical and even manual effort required in making the work. I see marks of layering. It’s material. Curator: Precisely! And it's through this manipulation of material that Grau Sala is exploring a tension, the romantic ideals of ballet versus the unseen realities of labor and process that create this perception of idealized beauty. The structural components, the ballerina’s posture, and the soft lighting all point towards a conscious construction of such perceived glamour. Editor: You speak of glamour, yet Grau Sala avoids glossy pictorial qualities. The marks from pastel handling are apparent, and the background, suggestive of a dressing room, reveals tools like instruments, chairs, or maybe mirrors, rather than hiding the work required by its subjects to prepare for performance. Curator: These material applications function formally to give an interesting spatial ambiguity, yes? Grau Sala presents a complex semiotic dance. We have the representational ballerinas depicted through abstracted marks. It's as if he is exploring both the figurative ideal and its breakdown in the act of artistic production. Editor: Breakdown feels extreme. Perhaps a "reveal" might be more apt? The artist seems less concerned with tearing down the illusion and more with exposing the labor. It encourages considering questions of value—physical versus ethereal—of art itself, the dancer’s labor, and the material choices here on display. Curator: Fair point. So what ultimately remains with you most vividly after having this time to consider "Ballerinas?" Editor: Definitely the tension that resides between high art's subject and the everyday, grounded in the act of creation and physical effort, not just representationally. Curator: Yes. For me it’s how Grau Sala transforms such common materials and mundane themes into something both haunting and enduring through considered and dynamic composition.