ÁTROPOS AND HER SISTERS — Raúl
OPENING THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
Exhibition from September 17 to October 22
The three Greek Moiras, which the Romans would call Parcae: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, were the personification of destiny.
One spun the thread of life, another calibrated the fate of that thread, and the third, Atropo, cut it with his scissors, when the crucial moment arrived.
I venture to think that when Rafael de Penagos divided the process of a drawing into three stages: excited about the execution of a good job, at first; restless, as the work clumsily progressed; and frustrated, by the painful end result, that could have a certain parallel with the life becoming personified in those ancestral divinities of antiquity.
But the title of this exhibition does not come so much from the fact that it contains some large-format drawing in which the disturbing Atropo or her sisters in the American “Forty and Fifti” are portrayed, in a very surreal way.
Nor because all the originals that comprise the sample (work for the press, illustrations and other drawings) were made following, ineluctably, what are we going to do, the three stages marked by Don Rafael.
Rather, the teacher Penagos, unlike what was staged by Moiras or Parcas, pointed out that from the frustration of the third graphic stage he always returned to the first: hopeful again to get a good drawing the next time.
And under this last heading the exhibition meets.
Raúl.
Large-format drawings that give the exhibition its name
Átropo 
Cloto y Láquesis
Some original small format of the sample (work for press, illustrations and other drawings)
Raúl
Since 1986 and for twelve years he made illustrations for the newspaper El País, being sent in 1990 by this newspaper as a graphic correspondent to Russia; now he publishes interchangeably in the newspapers La Razón and La Vanguardia. Adding more than three decades of daily collaboration in the national press.
He has also worked in the field of cartoons (Filman, Cruz Delgado), graphic design (Ministry of Culture, Renfe), editorial illustration (SM, Alfaguara), comic strips (Madriz, Medios Rev Circuit) or sculpture (sculptural pieces for the Spin communications tower in Shanghai, central sculpture of the Lillas Pastiá restaurant in Huesca).
Carrying out abundant graphic work at the same time and giving conferences and workshops in universities and private centers in Spain, France, Colombia or Mexico.
Individual expositions.. Actual 1994. Sala Amos Salvador, 2016, (Logroño). Casa de la Provincia de Sevilla. Casa Góngora de Córdoba. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid. Galería La Factoría de Papel (Madrid). Galería La Carbonería (Huesca). Galería Ziggourat (Bruselas). Galería Mirada (Ravena). Galería B.F.D. (París). La Bedeteca de Lisboa…
www.raulrevisited.com @raulrevisited
