Baco

After traveling to the bottom of the ocean, locking ourselves in an apocalyptic shelter, dancing to the rhythm of exotic birds or a Russian ballet, we wanted to find inspiration for this new collection in something figurative and tangible: a pictorial work.

It had to be special. With soul. Capable of transforming, like our accessories, one's mood. Of provoking unique sensations. Of stirring the viewer. And doing so from a groundbreaking perspective, with its own color palette and an original treatment of light that would allow us to play with the pieces. And, after much analysis, we found Bacchus (1598), Caravaggio's allegory of the god of wine that shines in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It had it all: the radical naturalism of the scene, the humanity of its protagonist, an unprecedented tonality, and lighting never before seen.

Scandalous and contradictory, misunderstood and cursed, Caravaggio breaks the rules of art. Every brushstroke is a sudden shock. A blow to tradition. His paintings contain hermetic universes that only the soul can enter. The characters appear contained in dark rooms, cavernous spaces bathed by a single source of radiant light. Faced with the ideal of beauty, faced with the prevailing canon, he delights in imperfection, in reality with all its complexity and mystery. He does not aspire to beautify the world but to portray its weaknesses, to capture the contradictions of a human condition overcome by passions. By death and suffering. By insignificance and misery. Virtue and fall, exuberance and scarcity, harmony and dissonance form the backbone of a work in dramatic tension where miracles no longer occur on altars, but in alleyways and dimly lit basements. In the mud.

Bacchus reflects that transgressive will. Crowned with vine leaves, over a tunic that reveals his sensual, muscular torso, a young man with an ambiguous gaze offers the viewer a cup next to a frothy jug and a withered fruit still life. His cheeks are flushed, dazed by the effect of the drink. His hands are tanned, with earthy nails. But no god cultivates the earth, no deity blushes. Because the one before us is not Bacchus, but a boy disguised as Bacchus. A subtle game of appearances and deceptions that highlights the illusory nature of things through two pictorial motifs that were irreconcilable until now: the still life with mythological representation.

We faced multiple challenges when designing the collection. To begin with, the three dimensions of the painting, from which we had to subtract one without compromising the result. Along with the markedly sensual sensory expression of its elements, which was essential to preserve. As well as the particular integration of the sacred and earthly planes, which would allow us to give the accessories greater uniqueness.

Other aspects also had to be considered, such as the protagonist's androgyne character, with their blurred gaze and ambiguous gesture, which we have materialized in earrings and necklaces without apparent gender, created from the piece itself and not from its function. And then the light. That light confronting the darkness. With its figures suspended over nothingness on the very verge of disappearance. With that blinding clarity emanating from the shadows to emphasize bodies, volumes, and reliefs, generating abrupt contrasts, vehement cutouts, viscerally juxtaposing forms without needing to temper the color palette. An intense theatrical effect that we translate, for the first time in Papiroga, into translucent pieces, such as the dark and vibrant burgundy, with an enigmatic opacity, and the deep and unsettling green, with a captivating elegance.

Arriving here is a collection inspired by the work of a rebel, a visionary who was several centuries ahead of modern painting. With his defiant invitation to wine, his Bacchus is sending us a message. Seize the moment. Enjoy the now. Live in the present. So let's enjoy life and art, while it lasts.