Review: Carlos Casu Bravo

Carlos Casu has gone back to drawing. And we're glad. After many years away from it, and after (re)training in techniques like pastel and oil at José Luis Martín de Vidales' studio, the Madrid artist treats us to his mastery with the pencil, capturing spaces, scenes and the people who inhabit them.

Building a bridge with photography, which he also practises, his drawings take us out into the street to watch people walking, as in Descenso or Hombre Paseando, but they also take us back to the bedroom, to rumpled sheets and cigarette smoke, as in Restos II, Descanso or Estudio de cigarrillo con mujer.

There's no doubt that Casu enjoys observing reality and setting it down with rigour and skill, but he also gives many of his drawings a poetic character right from the title itself (Algunos ángeles no tienen alas) or even lends them a fantastical or grimly metaphorical touch (Cortocircuito, La vendedora de sueños).

The still life lives

Carlos Casu (Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, 1955) devoted himself «to a normal life doing normal things» for several decades, until in 2008 he decided, through a mix of coincidence and willpower, to pick up the artistic path he had sketched out in his youth as a student at the Escuela Central de Artes Aplicadas. It was time to do less normal things…

In pastel Casu found a technique that could channel his need to capture the atmosphere and the magic of everyday objects. Casu's pastel combines the naturalness of drawing, which, as we've seen, the Madrid painter enjoys so much, with the luminosity of colour. That's how he arrives at the lyrical atmosphere running through much of the artist's work in this technique.

Although the Madrid painter uses pastel «with saturated, dense surfaces that get as far as possible from the soft stereotypes usually associated with this technique», the end result tends to be steeped in poetry. Even an egg can be poetic…

One of the genres Casu enjoys most is the still life. The artist has decided to breathe life back into a genre «ruined by restaurant paintings with rabbits in them», and he's well on his way. Just look at artworks like Mejillones en escabeche, Naranja y media or Pretérito Perfecto II, fit for a restaurant but also for a museum.

A bittersweet pastel

Another genre Casu works in successfully is landscape. Here too he applies pastel with authority. And in these artworks, even more than in his still lifes, we notice that lyrical shade that links some of his landscapes to Romanticism.

Those of us who live in Madrid look at La puerta del Sol, El Retiro or El Rastro differently thanks to the Boadilla painter's pictures. This 'looking differently' is the pure essence of poetry. Some find it harder, for others it comes so naturally that looking differently is all they can do, and they no longer remember what the world looks like without poetry… Carretera Nevada, Shopping, Palacio Cristal Invierno and other landscapes by Casu echo other 'poets' like Friedrich, Sisley or Pisarro. And let's not forget his industrial landscapes, full of tracks disappearing into the mist.

The figure, the woman

Carlos Casu is clearly fascinated by women too. As we saw, a good part of his drawings have the naked female figure as their protagonist, sometimes in a more naturalistic way and sometimes with symbolic intentions. Among his output we also get to enjoy female nudes in pastel, such as Mujer en azul.

Despite his obvious attraction to drawing and pastel, the Madrid painter doesn't rule out experimenting with other techniques in the near future. In fact, we've already seen some canvases using a mixed technique that give rise to pictures with a fairly original finish within his output, like Confidencias, a mysterious artwork brimming with intensity.

Immersed in art for almost a decade now, Carlos Casu is determined never to go back to the normal business of a normal life… So be it.