Ricardo blanque



The Naturalness of Line

By Carlos Espartaco
Member of the International Association
of Art Critics (Argentina’s Section)


I know Ricardo Blanqué Llobet from a long time ago. Even thought I had lost touch with him I must admit I was mistaken. Somehow he emitted signs of life determined to show me his works. When I had them before my eyes I immediately found out that his behavior was built on his drawings.

Body and line depict naturalness merrily melting together into drawing.

Through the somatic expression of his strokes that evoke Mediterranean landscapes and places impregnated with ozone, the air whirls round and round painting pirouettes and memory plays the magical fairy dance so praised to the artist.

This set of pictures, a small selection of thousands of drawings, sums up the fruitful results of tens of years of work devoted to the search of line.

If we take into account that Blanqué Llobet scarcely needs a few minutes to give shape of each of his works, made up of strokes and lines which deliberately mirror reality, the daily drama of mankind and its environment, embracing childhood events, the denouncement of repression and the consequent demand for freedom, we confirm that his drawing production is destined to reflect personal experiences.

From the most intimate and secret expression of his works we are going to deal with what the public receives from his drawings.

In fact, if we run our eyes over them, preliminary studies can not be distinguished from the definitive ones. These drawings do not pretend to be a collection of a material concealing a dialogue between lines and outlines. Moreover, they are not relics but living material abounding in emotions and human values as if they were notes of his innermost trips.

It is also worthy to remark that the selected pictures are at the same time the sources his memory feeds on continuously.

It would be wise to know the importance Blanqué Llobet attaches to these works so as to judge them fairly. His spontaneous pen drawings are fruits of the unconscious, the unexpected and chance. They are transparent, free from any trick. We can define them as true “pentimenti”: they prove the simultaneity of what is really seen and the flow of enchantment.

Day after day drawing becomes more significant to Blanqué Llobet since he makes use of it to describe the world spinning around himself. That is to say, by means of a secret code he naturally creates unsuspected works which would have been inapprehensible had he thought them over deeply.

That is the reason why we can not speak of a technique. Drawing is a product of the soul: it appears like a sign of energy emerging directly from the vitality of the body – which should not be confused with anxiety. In this way, drawing illustrates the physical aspect of gesture.

From other point of view between repression and freedom, other symbols come to life. His persevering exercise of the line together with the game of his memory plays, prove that Blanqué Llobet analyses the return of his own message.

Whatsoever the subject is – children’s games, repressive scenes, the invocation to the magical world – his strong desire for freedom is always present. This is not a “crucifixion” in the sense that for the artist it is the highest degree of abstraction but at the same time it runs the risk of failing into rhetoric. If the ”via crucis” is overcome, everything is likely to change into fantasy.

No direct references can be found in the works done by Blanqué Llobet. They are creative, risky and linear. The artist lacks time to perpetuate images outliving books. He prefers to see the world with his Mediterranean eyes. For Blanqué Llobet to draw is a daily search, it is precisely a way of becoming the master of decoupling the reality and do the metamorphosis. Thus, reality becomes a product to his restless hands, eager to find “The Naturalness of Line”.