ECLIPSE: THE MOURNING SUN, FOR FERNANDO PESSOA

A dark disc sits high in a field of ochre, and at its centre the sun has not quite gone. The eclipse is not black here — a pale core still burns through, and the yellow around it is laid on thick and scraped back, so the surface keeps the mark of the hand that made it. The lower third breaks into horizontal bands of white and ochre: a horizon, or a stretch of water, depending on how long you look.

It is two and a half metres tall and a metre and a half wide — taller than most people who will stand in front of it. At this scale the disc stops being a picture of an eclipse and becomes the thing itself, set at eye level in a room.

The dedication is to Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet who wrote all his life under invented names without ever quite settling into one. Kasimir de Dalmau Oriol painted two canvases of this size in 2024, each dedicated to a poet; this is the one for Pessoa, and Eclipse / Blindness is the one for Léopold Sédar Senghor.

Kasimir was born in Barcelona in 1960 and, by his own account, painted for more than thirty years before showing the work outside his own circle. What he is after, in his words, is a code the viewer has to crack: "art is a radically intimate and subjective language that is rooted in individual freedom."

Acrylic on canvas, 2024. 250 × 150 cm. One of a kind, ships unframed.

Shipping is included worldwide and insured to the full purchase value. A certificate of authenticity travels with the work, and you have fourteen days to return it.