Review: Jacques Villares

The urban watercolourist always faces the same dilemma: do I paint the motif everyone expects from a city, or do I look for new points of view? Jacques Villares isn't satisfied with the Carrión building and its Schweppes sign, and he also takes on another Madrid, one closer to street level... or to road level. Because the morning traffic jam is every bit as Madrid as the Santiago Bernabéu, and that's how Villares paints it in Madrid, ocho de la mañana, that other Madrid "that doesn't show up in the guidebooks".

Nor do the postcards feature the curious low angle of Madrid 3, with its stifling balconies covering the pavement of any Madrid street, a street that takes shape in Leganitos, a road near the capital's tourist centre that also goes unnoticed by visitors. That understated Madrid finally leads into the Patio de mi casa, another watercolour that breathes the melancholy of someone who has already lived a great deal in his city.

But Jacques Villares is a great traveller and he doesn't forget his camera when he leaves Madrid. And if he isn't travelling, there's always a friend who is and who will lend him a few photos. A good part of the output of this artist, French by origin but raised in Spain, feeds on the urban landscape of cities all over the planet.

And a trip no painter can skip (even less so a watercolourist) is Venice. Despite mass tourism, the Italian city keeps its magic (almost) intact. Nowhere else in the world does that happy connection between water and light occur. Reflejos en Venecia is one of those watercolours that tries to capture the city's spell.

Another unavoidable stop for an artist is Paris, all the more so for Jacques Villares, who in París desde las Galerías Lafayatte gives us, here, yes, a classic view of the city of light. The artist's technical skill and mastery of drawing are plain to see in this artwork, in which Villares also makes clever use of watercolour's economy of means: less can be a whole lot more.

Before crossing to the other side of the Atlantic we want to stop at Estación de tren de Oporto to illustrate Villares' skill with interiors too. The railway station motif is a classic, but here the artist uses it as a way of presenting the fluidity of movement and the silky contrast of light and shadow.

For all of us who have knowingly let ourselves be infected by yankee cultural imperialism, a watercolour like Breakfast in America raises a smile. Breakfast at a roadside diner in the United States, at least for a traveller who has covered a lot of miles, is an experience straight out of the movies. So is the dark Flatiron, or the aerial view chosen to depict Chicago I.

But the traveller doesn't live on cities (and their outskirts) alone, and least of all the watercolourist. Jacques Villares gives us some of his most stimulating artworks in his winter landscapes. Surely the Madrid-based artist has had Lars Lerin, a master of the coldest watercolour, among his references for these pieces. Villares takes us to K2 or to McKinley on this trip that is already drawing to a close.

Jacques Villares says he gave up painting for almost 20 years and that when he came back he practically had to start from scratch: "a trauma", he concludes with a laugh. A blessed trauma, no doubt, going back to doing what you enjoy. Because every Villares watercolour breathes that love of life, or better, of lives, that need to convey the pulse of human movement through lively settings, urban or natural, melancholy or festive.

Jacques Villares doesn't like to take himself too seriously, he is openly self-critical (something rare in the art world) and he seems to enjoy his self-imposed amateur status, even though he has been teaching at a school in Malasaña for some time now. But in his work there is no denying a lyrical quality that turns his watercolours into simple visual poems.

We invite you to visit Jacques Villares' gallery on Artelista.