Tigre Bleu [Blue Tiger]

In 1978, Éditions de la Différence, directed by the Portuguese editor Joaquim Vital, published the book «Rose et Bleu» by Jorge Luis Borges. For this edition, Joaquim Vital invited Júlio Pomar to produce images to accompany the texts. The artist created the illustrations as well as gouaches and screenprints that accompanied some numbered series.

Following the example of the gouaches découpées of the French painter Matisse - whom Pomar greatly admired - the artist challenged colour through drawing: «all colour is a matter of drawing. Every drawing produces a colour», Pomar said. From a mass of Yves Klein blue, Pomar carved with scissors the profile of a curved body from which emerge the geometric ear and the marked chin of the animal, thus projecting a «vast shadow» (Jorge Luis Borges). In this cut-out there is no ambiguity, because «cutting implies the brutality of fact», Pomar stated. This feline shadow carries the solemnity of a heraldic emblem.

In the story «Tigres Azuis», Borges tells of a man fascinated by a blue tiger that he never actually sees. This invisibility always on the verge of visibility has a powerful dazzling effect, because it makes something visible without showing it, creating the belief that it has been seen. This play of perceptions has always been central to painting and a fertile source of intrigue. This is precisely what occurs in Júlio Pomar’s work for «Rose et Bleu», which also gave rise to a series of more than fifty paintings featuring tigers.