How is the “skin” of a painting created? Lita Cabellut's soul and technique

Lita Cabellut accepted the challenge of adapting García Lorca's classic Blood Wedding. Thanks to her personal use of textures and visual resources, the result is a work full of life, light and symbolic strength. These are some of the elements of the artist's style that can be appreciated in this unique edition.

“Every picture I paint contains a little story. Each stroke, a sentence. And a syllable in every brushstroke”.

Lita Cabellut

A multidisciplinary identity

Although painting is her usual means of expression, Lita Cabellut works with other mediums such as sculpture, photography and video. That is why her painting has a physical quality, where textures serve as one of the artist's favourite resources.

The characters in her works become beings of “flesh, bone and pigment”. To achieve this effect, Lita Cabellut sought the advice of experts in a range of different fields, including chemical processes.

This is how she can model the various expressive nuances of the characters' faces on the canvas. “Feelings form scars. The human condition can be read in the colour and structure of the skin”.

Coco nº 14, (detail), 2011

Images with soul

The artist says that she uses up to twelve layers made up of different materials in her paintings, so that each piece includes a conjunction of layers of colour and matter.

One of her creative hallmarks is crackle-painting. This technique, reminiscent of the effect that the passage of time has on a fresco painting, increases the expressive power of the images.

Johanna van Delft (detail), from the series Black Tulip, 2014J

Lita Cabellut has incorporated a new visual strategy through the rollers she uses to apply the paint, which enhance the final result: this is how the Traces are configured, which accompany their corresponding image (the Faces) in a suggestive play on mirrors.

The making of Blood Wedding

Each illustration in the play was created through a very personal process. The composition is based on real characters according to a carefully planned staging.

Then, it is transferred to the canvas and undergoes an artistic intervention. Here is when Lita Cabellut applies different layers of colours, gestures, strokes and marks.

Preparation of the scene of the print El enlace, from Blood Wedding, 2017 by ARTIKA

Here are some examples in which the artist applies these techniques.

The Moon

An enigmatic lady, framed against a background of light and shadow, embodies a powerful presence in the work: the moon. This is the front cover of the Blood Wedding case.

The back cover is the face, constructed with cylinders of paint which, like a three-dimensional collage, reproduces the tones and nuances of the image of The Moon on a surface with volume.

Bodas de Sangre, 2020 by ARTIKA

The scar of the dry earth

La cicatriz de la tierra seca, 2017.

The chiselled features, the weathered skin and the looks that tell the story of bad omens are expressive effects that the artist achieves thanks to her masterful superimposition of textures.

At ARTIKA we are honoured to have jewels like Blood Wedding. Lorca's immortal text has been transformed into a work of art thanks to the imagination, technique and heart of Lita Cabellut. It features 90 prints created exclusively for this edition.