14. Mercedes Ruibal

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14. Mercedes Ruibal

Audioguide

Mercedes Ruibal was born in San Andrés de Xeve, Pontevedra, in 1928, although she emigrated with her family to Argentina during the Spanish Civil War.

Interested in the simplicity of the primitives and in the pink and blue period of Picasso, Ruibal reflects her time, with Francisco de Goya and his black paintings as a reference. She works reflecting on political and social problems such as class differences, racism, and wars.

The work, Bailarina en malva (Dancer in mauve), is made with mixed techniques on cardboard. A female figure stands out for the vivid colors that win the pulse of the black background. The critic, José María Moreno Galván, did not consider her a naive artist, but a good connoisseur of the modern and the mediaeval primitivism.

This is how the artist herself defined her work:

"My characters have the air of monsters because life itself is monstrous. [...]. For me they are real people that I come across hundreds of times in the streets. I do nothing more than frame them, give them color to highlight them, so that someone can say, and say it well, that they are human beings and not monsters."