It was always my aim to try and paint a portrait which would fit into the age we are living in. Of course, when I was very young I just painted academic portraits. Then, as I developed in my other paintings, the portrait developed with it. I still think that every portrait I do is a failure because it didn’t reach what I wanted to do with it. I think I’m best known as a portrait painter because these are the things that get most publicity, but I never wanted to be a portrait painter and I don’t consider myself one.
Lately, I tried to combine abstract with the portrait but I don’t think it’s a good marriage. I think the best I can do is to paint my abstract pictures and develop them and develop myself, and let the portraits flow freely, because I don’t believe that something which was art all through the centuries stops being art just because it lost its credit by the photographic portraits, the anonymous portraits, from which we have 300 in each country in the world; and although I know that it is a clash, I think, between my other paintings and the portraits, I can’t give up. It’s something that interests me, and that I might solve or might not. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I solve it when I’m 70.
