Casino 1975

Jesús Meneses del Barco made this painting, Casino, at an unknown date with oil on canvas, and it measures 70 by 100 cm. The overall impression is a sort of gloomy interior scene, like a theater set with too much brown paint. I imagine the artist in a dimly lit room, squinting to see the scene he’s painting. The brushwork looks hasty, with lots of little strokes that capture a sense of movement. The painting is built with layers of thin glazes, which give it a kind of transparency, but also kind of muddy, like a watercolor painting. The details are murky. I wonder what it was like for Meneses to work like this. Maybe the casino was a place he knew well, a place of chance and blurred memories. It reminds me a little of Manet, or maybe Degas, with its everyday subject matter and focus on human activity. The scene is both ordinary and mysterious, capturing a fleeting moment in time. All painters work with a sense of mystery, an uncertainty about what the painting will eventually become. This feels especially true in this atmospheric, somewhat haunted scene.