Bores esencial. 1926-1971

The chronology corresponds to the artist's career in Paris, where he moves to after attending the 1925 Iberian Artists Exhibition. Bores integrates into the School of Paris, along with Hernando Viñes, Benjamín Palencia and Pancho Cossío. The artist places his pictorial basis in recognition of Paul Cézanne, not as a precursor to Cubism, but as a teacher in the free practice of painting. The critic Tériade supports his work from the pages of Cahiers d'Art and Bores states that "I try to reconcile the new dimension brought about by Cubism with the traditional view" an aspect that remains constant in his painting. In this way, figuration and the defence of a real painting - always referring to a visual truth - are the principles that underpin his work for over fifty years.

Eugenio Carmona, curator of the exhibition, bases his reading of Bores on the concept of essential and on "fruit painting", which the painter announces in the late twenties, and which he reaffirms in his painting-manifesto Le saveur des fruits (1930). Carmona considered the phenomenon in which "the fruition of the act of painting and the fruition of an aesthetic experience in the spectator are similar to immediate and penetrating gratification of someone who savours a juicy fruit." The essence of Bores lies in achieving a balance at the end of the Twenties, "between the independence of artistic elements and figurative meaning in relation to the experiential," as noted in Dejeuner en rouge (1928) or La Rue (1929).

Conversely, Carmona notes the speed with which Bores "becomes a boresian, when defining his own territory," characterised by what, years later, aesthetics would call "formativity, that is: in art, invention and creation are simultaneous because only by producing the piece are the rules discovered."

In the late twenties, Bores change his palette to earth tones that he associates with what is Spanish and clear tones, predominantly white, ultramarine blue and bright reds. In the Thirties he moves away from Surrealism and currents advocating abstraction, emphasising in his painting narrative values, like in Femme au corset (1933), Intérieur crépusculaire and Matinée ensoileillée (both from 1935). In the Forties he focuses on the invariant monochrome, motivated by the possibility of reducing the depth of colour value on the fabric surface, as in L'été (1944) and Enfant en blanc (1946).

Light and colour are the two factors that support a painting which does not ever abandon figuration or the lyrical as distinctive signs. In its final stage, called the "white way" -due to the method, not because of the predominance of a colour- he proposes the channelling of figuration, outlining the forms and giving them transparency, as in Paysage d'automne (1965).