About the work
By the mid-1990s, ESPIGA Pinto’s work had entered a period of particular public visibility and mature reflection. The decade brought major solo exhibitions, including his 50th solo exhibition, at the National Library, in 1994.
This silkscreen belongs to the wider atmosphere of ESPIGA’s work from the 1980s onwards, when his practice became increasingly introspective, symbolic and meditative. Earlier Alentejo motifs such as the horse, the wheel, the sun, the feminine figure and the artist’s long fascination with geometry became closely connected themes. They emerged as part of a more reflective system of signs: a personal visual language through which memory, origin, cosmology and cultural inheritance could be brought into relation.
In this context, Head of a Woman with Pearls can be read as a concentrated expression of that later sensibility. The female head, a recurring presence in ESPIGA’s imagination, is not presented as portraiture in the conventional sense. Instead, it appears as an emblem: inward-looking, frontal, almost icon-like, held within arcs, bands and rhythmic points that suggest both ornament and structure. The pearls, set along the sweeping upper form, become part of the work’s geometry, mediating between adornment, sign and structure.
The image carries the intimacy of a study while retaining the symbolic charge of ESPIGA’s larger 'Maps of Memory' series.
Made in 1994, the year of his 50th solo exhibition, this artist’s proof offers a quietly powerful point of entry into ESPIGA Pinto’s mature period: a moment when public acclaim and inward enquiry were not opposed, but deeply connected.
Details
Artist: ESPIGA Pinto
Title: Head of a Woman with Pearls (Cabeça de Mulher com Pérolas)
Date: 1994
Medium: Silkscreen on paper
Dimensions: 28.5 x 21.5 cm
Edition: Artist’s proof III/XXV
Signed, numbered and dated by the artist.
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FRAME NOT INCLUDED. This artwork is sold unframed. Bespoke framing options and framing advice are available. Please contact us. Any frame, mount or room setting shown in images is for illustrative purposes only. Please check the stated artwork dimensions before ordering.
