Nothing around here...
GET INSPIRED

Bacchus

2022
So let us enjoy life and art while it lasts.

After travelling to the bottom of the ocean, hiding in an apocalyptic refuge, dancing to the sound of exotic birds or a Russian ballet, we wanted to be inspired for this new collection by something tangible, figurative and real: a pictorial work of art.

It needed to be special. With a soul. Capable of transformation, like our accessories, it can transform the mood. To induce unique emotions. To move the spectator. And to do so from a ground-breaking perspective, using our own colour palette and a unique way of treating light that allowed us to play with the pieces. And, after much analysis, came Bacchus (1598), Caravaggio’s allegory of the god of wine which is resplendent in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It had everything: the radical naturalism of the scene, the humanity of its protagonist, an unheard-of tonality and never-before-seen lighting.

Scandalous and contradictory, misunderstood and condemned, Caravaggio broke the rules of art. Each stroke of the brush is a sudden shock. A stab at tradition. His paintings encapsulate hermetic universes into which only the soul can venture. The subjects are depicted in dark rooms, cavernous spaces bathed in a single source of radiant light. Against the ideal of beauty, before the prevailing canon, he takes pleasure 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. Through death and suffering. For insignificance and misery. Virtue and decline, exuberance and scarcity, harmony and discord are the backbone of a work in tension dramatic where miracles no longer take place on the altar, but in the backstreets and darkened cellars. In the mud.

Bacchus reflects that will to transgress. Crowned with vine leaves, on a robe that exposes his sensual, muscular torso, a young man with an ambiguous gaze offers the viewer a glass, along with a frothing jug and a still life of withered fruit. His cheeks are flushed, giddy from the effect of the drink. His hands are browned, with earthy nails. But no god nurtures the earth, no divinity blushes. For the one who stands before us is not Bacchus, but a boy disguised as Bacchus. A subtle play of appearances and trickery that highlights the illusory nature of things by means of two hitherto irreconcilable pictorial motifs: still life and mythological representation.

We faced multiple challenges in designing the collection. We started with the three dimensions of the painting, from which we had to subtract one without compromising the result. Along with the sensorial, distinctly sensual expression of its elements, which it was essential to preserve. As well as the particular integration of the sacred and earthly plane, which would allow us to give the accessories an even greater uniqueness.

Other aspects also had to be considered, such as the androgynous character of the protagonist, with her diffuse gaze and ambiguous expression, which we have encapsulated in earrings and necklaces with no apparent gender, created from the piece itself and not from its function. And then the light. This light in the face of darkness. With their figures hovering above the nothingness on the very edge of disappearance. With that blinding clarity that emerges from the shadows to emphasise bodies, volumes and depths, generating abrupt contrasts, intense cut-outs, viscerally contrasting forms without the need to temper the colour palette. An intense theatrical effect that we express, for the first time in papyroga, in translucent pieces, such as the burgundy, dark and vibrant, with an enigmatic opacity, and green, deep and haunting, with a captivating elegance.

A collection inspired by the work of a rebel, a visionary who anticipated modern painting by several centuries. By inviting us to wine in defiance, Bacchus is sending us a message. Seize the moment. Enjoy the now. Live in the moment. So let us enjoy life and art while it lasts.