{"id":266229,"date":"2026-02-03T23:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266229\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T23:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T23:07:11","slug":"in-sumptuous-paintings-a-rising-art-star-updates-the-17th-century-portrait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/266229\/","title":{"rendered":"In sumptuous paintings, a rising art star updates the 17th-century portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The women wear high-collared puffer jackets and billowing sports jerseys, the fabrics richly painted in acid yellow and bubblegum pink. Bathed in cool light against shadowy backdrops, they seem to glow as they regard the viewer dispassionately with an aristocratic air.\n <\/p>\n

\n For the past few years, the Spanish artist Nieves Gonz\u00e1lez has taken the earthy backdrops, dramatic lighting and opulent fabrics typical of Spain\u2019s Baroque period and pulled them into the future. The artist\u2019s imagined female subjects possess the demeanor of an ambitious noblewoman or devoted saint, but their wardrobes are wholly contemporary.\n <\/p>\n

\n They are also imbued with a touch of the absurd: Some hold pool inflatables or sports paraphernalia; others have hair cascading to the ground. Symbols drawn from mythical and religious paintings become tongue-in-cheek additions, such as the swan \u2014 a nod to Zeus \u2014 as a lap animal, or the biblical serpent as a pool tube.\n <\/p>\n

\n The delight in contemporizing the antiquated past may feel akin to the Pope in cassocks and a White Sox baseball cap<\/a>, or a good medieval meme<\/a>. But the artist\u2019s reverence for the medium is clear in how she paints, delicately rendering texture and light to romantic effect. A painter since childhood, Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s practice is born from her fascination with Baroque art, and her own classical training at the University of Seville.\n <\/p>\n

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\n \u201cI\u2019m very attracted to the power and intensity contained in the figures, in their postures and their garments,\u201d she explained over email. \u201cSeeing those works again and again was fundamental to understanding them from a pictorial standpoint, and also to imagining other possible interpretations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Though already a rising art star, Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s work burst into the mainstream when she painted Lily Allen for her explosive tell-all album, \u201cWest End Girl<\/a>,\u201d after the creative director Leith Clark found her work online. In the portrait, Allen appears in a polka-dot robin\u2019s blue puffer jacket and black lace, her cropped bangs framing her brows. Art and fashion publications jostled to interview her as the album cover took off online; during Allen\u2019s press tour, \u201cLate Night\u201d host Jimmy Fallon even presented the singer<\/a> with a real version of the imagined puffer.\n <\/p>\n

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\n \u201cIt was very overwhelming,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said of the response, as she was suddenly flooded with messages online. \u201cIt was something I didn\u2019t expect and that has generated great visibility for my work.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Even before \u201cWest End Girl,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s work was already gaining attention. In December, her show \u201cSacred Hair\u201d opened at T293 gallery in Rome, and the Santa Monica, California-based gallery Richard Heller displayed two of her paintings at Untitled Art Fair in Miami Beach. Next up, she\u2019ll exhibit a solo presentation at SC Gallery in Bilbao in February, and another at Richard Heller in June.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cShe\u2019s capturing a certain zeitgeist,\u201d Heller said in a phone call. \u201cShe\u2019s injecting this new life into an age-old genre of portrait painting. And the images are just striking, too.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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\n Gonz\u00e1lez may be modernizing the fashion codes of classical painting, but she\u2019s also emphasizing a longstanding relationship between the two. From the Renaissance onward, paintings often served<\/a> as a vehicle for new sartorial styles as portraits went on display or traveled between courts. Gonz\u00e1lez isn\u2019t attempting to capture trends, however, and focuses more on what a particular garment might bring to an image, she explained. \u201cQuilted coats, athletic shirts or loose garments allow me to construct very sculptural figures.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n She added: \u201cThey\u2019re very common items that almost everyone has owned or worn at some point, and that makes it possible for many people to see themselves reflected in them. That mix between the everyday and the monumental is what interests me most in translating to painting.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

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\n In her shared studio space, Gonz\u00e1lez keeps a disciplined schedule, painting from photographs and keeping her favorite artists\u2019 books close by as she works. Lately, she\u2019s been thinking about the psychological power of Spanish painter Diego Vel\u00e1squez\u2019s masterwork \u201cPortrait of Innocent X,\u201d the searing papal portrait the artist made in 1650, which Gonz\u00e1lez recently visited in Rome. Heller, too, mentions the famed portrait when talking about her work, and the pope\u2019s vibrant, status-projecting red cape \u2014 not unlike the voluminous puffer jacket in its voluminous shape, gleaming fabric and authoritative presence.\n <\/p>\n

\n But Gonzalez\u2019s favorite painting to stand in front of is Francisco de Zurbar\u00e1n\u2019s \u201cThe Virgin of the Caves<\/a>\u201d in Seville, in which a statuesque Virgin Mary, cloaked in resplendent red and blue, is flanked by cherubs and she blesses the kneeling monks around her. Gonzalez has referenced it directly in one of her paintings; she loves the 17th-century painter\u2019s handling of fabrics, but Mary\u2019s presence strikes her as well.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cShe makes me think about a femininity that resists all the adversities of history,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a painting that has accompanied me for years and that I return to almost like a ritual.\u201d\n <\/p>\n