BELLORIN

The Paintings, Drawings and Graphics of Francisco Bellorín
Rafael Pineda

…Had he been among Mondrian's or De Stijl's contemporaries, but equipped with today's pluralistic criteria, wouldn't Bellorín have insisted on having the right to place his works on the border between the microcosm and the macrocosm? Bellorín has done nothing else, in the most categorical fashion, in the past two decades, beginning with the instant when, already well-versed in the arts through his local and European studies, he settled down in Venezuela's most remote horizon: Maracaibo… …With regard to everything else, even in the most complex and visually problematic situations, Bellorín's synthetic intelligence persists above all. He does not become immersed in the enigmas nor does he embrace them as part of his arcane intervention in the depths of the human being; he does not overdo the dosage of tromp d'oeil with anything that may result superfluous or out of context. The result: a reality, from which the painter dusts off everything that seems to be, but which is in no way conclusive, which gives his work a degree of conceptual/visual tension whose energies interact in place of that which he forcibly or conveniently omitted, benefiting the high epigrammatic degree that the image achieves at this point. Almost an idol, thanks to the way in which he generally approaches the generic, installing it against a neutral background or within a great progression of planes where masses and voids gain equilibrium while in a state of repose, not following Mondrian's style, but rather representing a mental compulsion. This is a discourse that aspires to unite, common to all the techniques employed by the artist: acrylic and pastel, ink and pencil as well as engraving.

Subject matter sings in a scenic feast whose development can be seen in Bellorín's paintings, dictated by the habitual which has been magnified through the search in which both soul and instinct participate equally as extreme forms of receptivity, which Mondrian defined to his contemporaries as "internalized exteriority" and which they, in turn, ascribe to "a condensation and simplification".
In all of his works, be it splotches or lines, the subtle infrastructure that has been perfected by the technician, no less than by the artist, both made aware by the vacuum that bourgeoning action, images and ciphers occupied, prevails. The Classic artists were Classics among other things, because they knew perfectly well these areas of supreme decantation.

What we see depends on the Thread of Life, a relation that the painter and designer rationalizes as an object of contemplation or binds it with his own feelings in the existential gesture, in the crudeness of one's own ghosts as well as those of others, in the happiness of the triumphant form over the precariousness of the circumstances.

At this point, the new imagination shares in a great tragic moment, proper to the era, that Mondrian tried so hard to suppress in his theoretical repertoire, with his constitutional Puritanism, as often happened. On the contrary, Bellorín, going in another direction which could no less be explored than the others, shows the tragic notion of our time, austere in his scale, or drunk in his color schemes, any way he pleases because with his painting, as well as his drawing, he can achieve anything.

Observe him well: with one hand he holds a brush, pen, charcoal or engraving instruments and he also extends this hand so that Mary, the ceramic artist, gifted with her own fantastic capacity, may reach it in whatever capacity she may need it. The other hand, Bellorín places where he must: on his heart.