405 & Sunset
Lasarte, Mercedes
Argentina, 1940
405 & Sunset, 1999
Signed lower right: "Lasarte"
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Oil on linen
122 x 152 cm
CTB.2015.249
Artwork history
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Artist´s property (donation), October, 2014.
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Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.
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– Mercedes Lasarte. Art Wanson Gallery. Marbella Club. June, 2014. Pag. 76. (Exhib. Cat.).
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-Barcelona-Paris-New York. De Urgell a O´Keeffe. Espai Carmen Thyssen, Sant Feliú de Guixols [Exhib. Cat.], Sant Feliú de Guixols, 2015. P. 140-141.
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– KHRÔMA. El Universo emocional del color. Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra [Exhib. Cat.], Ed. Fundació Museu Andorra (Museand), Principado de Andorra, 2023. P. 48, 49, 118, 191 y 192 [Sheet by Pilar Giró].
Expert report
As an alchemist of colour and druid of form, Mercedes Lasarte’s works emanate a special magic. Maybe because such a complex world as this needs a space where one can look and daydream. Mercedes invites us to rediscover ourselves, without fear, through a language that is Neo-Expressionist, Neo-Fauvist, Neo-Pop, with the image from the other side of the mirror.
405 & Sunset is a work that appears very different from her other paintings, because Mercedes does not usually paint night. But night is magic. Light emerges to spotlight a darkness that is not fearsome. This is a darkness that is permeated by the nebula of dreams, wo¬ven from the strings of lights of cars driving down Sunset Avenue, as seen from her studio.
Through her eyes and her paintbrushes, a metamorphosis on can-vas, the painting becomes a window and the views from her Los Angeles studio glow in the world, waiting for someone to look out. The movement and bustle remain on the other side, on the painting’s horizon.
Mercedes Lasarte also paints the sound of the city, harmonising the incessant but orderly hum of the cars with the echo of the voices that live there and make humanity vibrate. A cosmopolitan artist by vocation who possibly interpretad better while awake at night.
Pilar Giró