On occasion of the International Jumping Competition CSIO 2015 in Barcelona, Real Club de Polo and Barcelona Equestrian Challenge organized a contest to promote sport, culture, education and health through art and design. The development of this mural was an initiative to link these elements, and the city of Barcelona through the iconic novel El Quijote de la Mancha; and one of the main characters, the horse Rocinante.
The commission involved developing a composition that would promote the figure of the horse within a cultural context, and draw a connection between the plastic representation of horses throughout the history of art, and the love for the animal itself.
The artists Skount, Laguna and Emilio Cerezo worked together interlacing their styles as homage to Spanish art and literature.
Their three styles melt into a solid composition in celebration of the legacy of Spanish Art in this new generation of talent; Laguna’s oneiric figures stem from the heritage of a Dalinian influence that has shaped in our cultural cognizance a world of distorted animals and artifacts.
Skount’s stately characters evoke the majestic allure of Velazquez’s portraiture while adding a vibrant color scheme and a very unique technique that indubitably place them in the contemporary artistic context.
Emilio Cerezo’s almost sculptural use of paint brings a carnal quality to the composition that stems from a Goyesque influence, bringing the mural to dramatist realism upon the horse’s physique that the audience – the elite within horse riders- will surely value; In the end, the horse is the main character of the mural and the event.
