José Higuera: the emotion of reality

The sea and its foaming fury on the lonely coasts of northern Spain. The beach of golden sand and the silvery blanket of those calm waters so typical of the Mediterranean. In the painter José Higuera, the ever changing ocean has a personal, sensitive chronicler. His seascapes capture a unique instant, loaded with feeling.

For this artist, born in Cologne though raised in Spain, who showed his skill at drawing very early on, working in the territory of realism doesn't only mean reproducing the chosen subject as faithfully to reality as possible. That isn't enough for him. He doesn't share the aims of hyperrealism, which can turn out so cold in its critical purpose of emulating the empty reality of modern societies.

What he aspires to is capturing the magic of the moment that will never repeat itself. His painting isn't a criticism of anything, but a declaration of love for his surroundings, including the urban landscape of cities like Barcelona, Bilbao or the heart of the city par excellence, Manhattan. Here the poetry is no longer about Nature, it's about old and new shaking hands in the Catalan capital's Plaza de Colón, about the sign-laden flow of Bilbao's roads and the vertical steel of New York's skyscrapers.

Over these views reigns the weight of that misty sky the Impressionists were so fond of. They aspired, as the name of the movement itself says, to give an impression of reality, and that's why they painted the variations of the atmosphere, with its gases and its smoke. Higuera follows this line in a way, in that his brush is after the emotion of reality. Of his own reality, which is personal though transferable: that of the landscapes and the people around him, on which falls a delicate light that underlines the outlines and heightens the sense of intimacy. Lighting effects that reveal the painter's craft, as well as his affection for what he does and for what his painting reflects.