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Of Boxing

José Martín

The complexity of the seventies from the point of view of a lad from Constitución [neighbourhood] was - at the least - confusing. I grew up with the warnings of my old lady, every time I went out to buy something or other: “If someone shouts out to you from a car – run. Don’t go to the police. Get yourself into a shop and shout. Ah, and keep an eye on the scales because the butcher’s quick and always tries to rip you off. Don’t get distracted.”

Trying to translate (from a more mature perspective) the reasonings of a child when presented with these family mandates, one would understand: “When you go out onto the street, your life is in danger. Not from someone who by chance decides to hurt you, but because someone is out to get you. Don’t even think about going to the police because it might just be them. Ah, and the butcher – even though you don’t know him – wants to shit on you. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know you, or your family, only that he wants to do badly by everyone so that he ends up with more money in his pocket at the end of the month. Or rather, he rips off those who choose to give him their custom; those that pay his living.”

Boxing: on the concave box of the wooden-clad television, most of all watching Monzón and Galíndez. I was too young for Ringo or Nicolino.

Of Boxing: boxers; elite athletes; possessors of the talent to hit a punch; great bearers of pain; assassin’s eyes; lost souls; madmen; the only madman who makes it to the second round; the matey; the popular; the violent; the players; the hungry; the addicts to the present; the bloody; the heroic; the bastards; swollen faces; sweaty; but – above all – all of them, lads.

Of Boxing, the Ring: shouts; the seated yet passionate crowd; searching for beauty and death; pain; to see synthesized humanity; the truth; the undeniable; the factual; the quest of two sportsmen to directly damage the body of their adversary; the sentinel lights; the ambience; smoke; noise; the violence.

The Boxer: their logic of life that - for some strange reason - I admire and identify with.

The Ring: the human group, with the people, all of them, searching for something that defines us; for passion, duress, pain and glory.

The TV is switched off, the fight is ended and the madness of the seventies returns.

Today, watching boxing isn’t the same as it was in my childhood - but it still fascinates me.

Big Danilo lands one on Jóse

2008
acrylic on canvas
50 x 50 cm.

Strolling

2008
acrylic on canvas
100 x 70 cm.

Reflection descendant 2

2008
acrylic on canvas
60 x 100 cm.

Ro ro

2008
oil on canvas
60 x 60 cm.

The lift

2009
acrylic on canvas
80 x 70 cm.

Dishes

2008
acrylic on canvas
100 x 120 cm.

Mrs.

2009
acrylic on canvas
70 x 50 cm.

Torso wrist in the descendant

2008
acrylic on canvas
70 x 90 cm.

Dishes 2

2008
acrylic on canvas
50 x 70 cm.

The Ring 13

2008
acrylic on canvas
90 x 90 cm.