Adrián Goma: an inward journey

Madrid painter Adrián Goma is marked by a personal take on Expressionism, something you notice above all in his fondness for portraiture. A genre in which he sets out to capture the essence of the sitter's personality (often his own), in a way that recalls Egon Schiele, whom Goma counts among his influences.

That influence shows in the way he tilts the posture of his figures or distorts their facial expressions, which lets him reach a greater psychological depth in his characters.

This young artist's work is eminently autobiographical. His portraits suggest a closeness to the model, whom he individualises through gestures, gazes and attitudes, like the seriousness of Jesús or the sadness he looks to bring out in his own Autorretrato.

The Schiele reference is especially visible in David afeitándose, not only because of the raised jaw and the sitter's wide, fixed eyes (which come with the act of shaving, after all) but also in the formal qualities of the artwork: the quick brushstroke loaded with pigment, the flat background, the neutral colours.

Another strand in Goma's work is the one with grotesque elements, bordering on humour or even on the gruesome. As in a Victorian horror story, his canvases and panels are populated by a black crow, the skull of a vanitas, human and animal corpses. The palette darkens, bringing out the deathly pallor of a body, of the bone of a skull, the bluish grey of a rabbit's fur or a fish's scales, the pink of the skin of a pig split open. The famous Russian expressionist Chaïm Soutine comes to mind, who liked to paint cuts of meat straight from the butcher's.

Goma's landscapes are tinged with unsettling reddish tones. La casa roja or the tree in an untitled panel crystallise into angular planes, with a brushstroke just as nimble but less thickly loaded. They are scenes that seem wrapped in mist.

The painter plays with colour, pushing its expressive qualities, in order to convey his inner world, which is what feeds his painting: "his temperament and the many feelings that come with him every day".

Goma explores other fields of creation such as illustration, comics, sculpture and animation, and his work is permeable to all of them. Experimentation, tied to his own self-taught artistic nature, is key to the personality of this artist who does not settle for the placid side of things.