Antonio Navarro is in love with the light of his Levantine land and the enormous appeal of women. He uses these two elements to create a distinctive pictorial symphony. His women send us a message of calm, serene beauty from their canvases. We have to encounter painters like this from time to time who are away from any avant garde, to reconcile ourselves with a way of understanding art. Art which is certainly anchored far from the present moment, but that leads us to a world composed of harmony, which conveys a simple message: that of a man submerged in the colors of life, living his own mystery in the light of the Mediterranean sea.
Antonio Navarro´s painting is a marvel of delicacy, light, daydreams and, ultimately, beauty. His artworks, painted with a spectacular impressionist realism, immerse us from the first peek in an unreal, utopian world, in a happy Arcadia through which he masterly guides us .
In each of his paintings the artist offers us three different dimensions; first the landscape, an environment in which nature lush is shown as in an eternal spring. After that, a small still life with flowers, fruits, precious objects, and in the center of the composition, presiding over all, there is a figure of a beautiful woman of modest gesture who you should look at with your eyes half closed to avoid being injured by the flood of light on the artist’s canvas.
Navarro’s paintings are saturated with color, but miraculously, his splendid palette achieves a balanced effect which never seems to be excessive. The artist achieves harmony through the mastery of contrast. His artworks are similar to natural landscapes, where nothing is out of place. So his its flowers are like fireworks, they only seem to rest in wicker crafted baskets ,but it seems like at any time they may take up a miraculous flight beyond the flat surface of the canvas.
And women, the romantic women of Antonio Navarro. Nameless women , ageless, anonymous people who live outside of time, ethereal beings contained in their own circumstances, who belong to a dream, the same dream where they live. Maybe at first glance we may think that women forming the pictorial harem of the artist are simply used as elements beyond the composition, without further significance than flowers, trees or objects. But if we stop and observe them in depth, we will realize that each face, each figure hides a story. These women give their figure to the painter, but keep to themselves, after his half closed eyelids , stories of love, suffering, mystery …
Navarro began achieving success in his artistic career by painting rustic characters, men and women who were field farmers or ranchers. Then he went through a stage in which children were his main source of inspiration and now devotes his brushes to paint almost exclusively women. ‘But this is not definitive by any means, any day I may completely change the arguments, just as my painting style evolves too’. ‘Until some time ago I tried to stick to the more traditional forms but I’m slowly transitioning to Impressionism, a style that allows me to capture the beauty of the Mediterranean light, the light within us who have been born in the Levantine coast’, he says.
