Throughout his career as an artist Rodríguez Amat has always maintained a certain activity as a portrait painter. For him the portrait has been a way to understand people. In fact he never accepted a commission to do a portrait. Besides this, he has never confined himself to the portrait as a simple image of the person portrayed. By means of the portrait he is able not only to express his feelings for the person but to trace the relationship between painter and model.

The firsts portraits he did date from his school years. From then on he painted more than one hundred and twenty portraits and self-portraits. After a career of more than fifty years, the result is a little more than two or three portraits per year. During all this time his activity as a portrait painter has been very irregular.

La Pepa

Oil on cardboard / 41 cm x 33 cm / 1961

LA PEPA 1961

I present this portrait as one of the first portraits made by me at the age of sixteen.

Pepita Meléndez was a model, one of the best known model in Barcelona in the fifties and sixties. She was indeed the model of many painters and sculptors at that time.

It was in the Fine Art School that Rodríguez Amat met her. Between 1960 and 1964, the years he spent in the school, he painted and especially drew her many times.

She was a very simple woman, but at the same time warm and ope in conversation and manner. Everyone who had to deal with her still remembers that much loved lady today.

SELF-PORTRAIT 1964

The self-portrait is sometimes the result of the artist relating to himself through the representation of his own image. Throughout his artistic career Rodríguez Amat has painted many self-portraits. Several techniques and many attitudes to artistic principles have been used in his self-portraits, of which there are around twenty.

He painted this self-portrait at the age of nineteen right at the end of his school years. A self-portrait that characterizes his painting at that time.

Self-portrait 1964 / Oil on linen / 100 cm x 81 cm

THE SCULPTOR JOAN MORA 1966

The change that undergoes his painting also affects his portraits.

My friend, the sculptor Joan Mora

Oil on sacking on wood panel / 100 cm x 139 cm / 1966

Fragment of the portrait

This portrait of the sculptor Joan Mora, a friend of the artist's, is painted in bold strokes. Both the paste of the oil painting and the sacking on which it's painted confer a special texture to this painting.

Several symbols related to sculpture can been found in this work . The sculptor, at the right side of the painting in his left hand, holds a figure that symbolises the goddess which inspires the sculptor as a creative artist. His right hand appears in the corner on the left and seems as if he is holding a sculpture. Within the context of this picture other abstract forms are combined together.

Esther / Plaster / 1981

Bronze / 50 cm x 40 cm x 33 cm /1990

Bronze / 50 cm x 40 cm x 33 cm /1990

Pencil on paper / 71 cm x 51 cm / 1990

Pencil on / 71 cm x 51 cm / 1990

SELF-PORTRAIT 1991

Sometimes a face is the spark that generates creative action. Once sensorial perception has been provoked by the sight of a face, creative action follows a process in which the image loses all its qualities and attributes. From that moment on the painting starts to become free of the person portrayed and follows its own path.

This picture makes that process evident. Here, not only psychology but also physiognomy are lost in the visual image.

Self-portrait / Oil on linen / 195 cm x 130 cm / 1991

THE MOTHER OF THE ARTIST 1990 - 1991

Pencil on paper / 70 cm x 52'5 cm / 1991

Oil on linen / 195 cm x 130 cm / 1990