Guitarist

48" x 40"
Oil
1999

When I lived in Spain, sometimes I would go to Pena Juan Breva in Malaga to listen to guitar playing and flamenco singing. It was a place where Spaniards used to come and play guitars, sing flamenco, and drink cheap wine. Then, Flamenco was not commercialized on a grand scale.

The Spaniards would come and play and sing their souls out. Brick layers, carpenters, workers, intellectuals and businessmen; they would all spend most of the night singing or listening and drinking wine with tapas, even though the same morning they would have to go to their work. Usually at the flamenco show, guitar players dressed in black vest, with Cordoba sombrero, very formal; but in Pena, they were totally free, and everybody could come there in their every day clothes.

Here I painted symbol of guitar player, not the ethnical one. Huge hands dominate the instrument. It is he, what counts. He reveals his soul at this moment. There is no time, and he is extremely happy now. The misery, hard work, problems, are all forgotten.