The Colombian painter Diego Ramos, one of the most brilliant current artists on the subject of bullfighting, has sold out in just two weeks the limited edition of the book that includes all the works that he has dedicated to the gypsy bullfighter Rafael de Paula for more than twenty years . Rafael de Paula, seen by Diego Ramos is a luxurious and careful edition of 140 pages of coated paper, with slipcase and hard cover, in which more than one hundred works by the young Colombian painter are reflected, all of them inspired by bullfighting and the figure of the famous right-hander from Jerez de la Frontera, whose son, Jesus Soto, writes the accompanying texts.
The artist himself assures EFE that “the edition, thoughtfully sold online, has sold out in just fifteen days.There were few, only 150, the copies that we threw away, all numbered and dedicated by Paula himself , but as soon as its publication was known, an unexpected barrage of requests arrived that speaks of the great devotion that, despite everything, fans continue to have by Rafael”. The intention of Diego Ramos was to make known everything that has inspired him in his artistic career by the great gypsy bullfighter, whom he considers his best source of inspiration since the teachers of the Bullfighting School of his native Cali, where He took his first steps as a novillero, they insisted that he watch videos of his tasks.
“Rafael always attracted me, since I was a child, as a bullfighter and as a person. He has been a constant fixation for me. And hence, when I decided to leave the bullfighting, because I had no value, and began to dedicate myself to painting, he has been a permanent model”. “That is why, when during the confinement I dedicated myself to searching in my studio to make a book about my career, I verified that he was the bullfighter I had painted the most, so the most appropriate thing was that it was through all his paintings and sketches that my evolution could be seen”.
The more than one hundred works of Ramos about Raphael de Paulathat appear in this edition are mostly unpublished, and the techniques in which they have been carried out over five decades range from watercolor to oil, going through gouache, pastel or even collages and notes on pencil. Diego Ramos considers that it is “only a painting book, but one that shows my entire range of technical resources, including the collages that I made for a time with old bullfighting posters, sand from the bullrings or remnants of bullfighting costumes , but also as a bullfighter of the artistic dimension of the great Rafael, he can inspire such different works over time”.
The Colombian says he feels both satisfied and surprised by the success of the first publication of his work on paper, which he considers “an experiment as an author’s book, in which there is a lot of painting seen from the aesthetic side, not the tragic one of the bullfighting”. “And that is precisely the best conclusion of this case: that bullfighting painting and good bullfighters are still interesting . I would have liked it when I began to see something like that with everything that Zuloaga painted about Juan Belmonte, or what Roberto Domingo did with Rafael El Gallo. So, seeing how well it has gone down among the people, we will probably do a second edition soon,” he concludes.
