[A Bull Catching in Santarém]

Bullfighting drawings appear early in Júlio Pomar’s work. A brief look at some of his childhood and youth sketchbooks reveals that the motif is not occasional. On the contrary, although with different rhythms, the theme runs throughout the artist’s career. In the painting «Uma Pega em Santarém», from 1988, however, the motif acquires a particular purpose. The canvas becomes the place of an arena where forces confront one another: the forces generated by the collision between two bodies - the bull and the forcado - and the forces produced by colour and pictorial material.

Exploring the grammar of painting - composed of lines, patches, saturated or transparent colours, values of light and dark, and glazes - each element possesses a force that influences the adjacent ones, generating tension. Thus, «Uma Pega em Santarém» is both an approach to the theme of bullfighting and a test of the expressive potential of each pictorial element. As can be observed, both the thematic motif - the bull, the forcado, the barriers of the arena - and the expressive elements of painting - lines and colours - undergo deformation when placed side by side or brought into contact.