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Artworks
Paolo Salvador
Adolescentes, 2023Painting - Oil on linen90 x 70 cm (35 x 27 in)Further images
• This work shows a bust portrait of a human figure carrying a feline character on their shoulders • The composition, centered around the characters and leaving little room for...
• This work shows a bust portrait of a human figure carrying a feline character on their shoulders
• The composition, centered around the characters and leaving little room for the background, is rather rare within Salvador’s body of work
• Indeed, the artist usually favors full-length portraits while leaving large expanses of the canvas for sensuous, dreamlike backgrounds reminiscent of landscapes inspired by the topography of his hometown, Lima
• Common to Salvador’s works, the animal here is not representative of a real creature but only suggestive of a puma. In Andean tradition, pumas symbolize connectivity with the earth, as well as power, strength, wisdom, and intelligence
• Through his striking color palette, Salvador doesn’t pursue a realistic representation of the world; on the contrary, his compositions are the incarnation of his intimate mythical imagination. Salvador’s vivid images are externalizations of personal and allegorical narratives, drawn from both his biography and the history and culture of Peru
• Entwinement is a common trope in his works, which alludes to both the interlacing narratives and histories that make up present-day Peru, and the Andean cosmology that understands a balance between all living beings: “Humans and animals have a long history of mutualism which I am always fascinated to learn more about” — PSA
• This approach draws on the mutualism between humans and animals found in the anthropomorphized creatures of ancient Andean and Amazonian myths