Elsa Gárate

The canvases of Spanish artist Elsa Gárate, populated by silent female figures, are not intended to depict reality, but to dwell within its folds. In her hands, portraiture is not a mirror of identity, but its echo, the unstable doppelganger, the mask. Her use of acrylic and oil paint is not merely an aesthetic choice—it becomes a symbol of the multiplicity of the self, of identity as an unfinished process.

Her women neither smile nor seduce: they contemplate and demand. In their lack of affection, space arises to reflect on desire, power, and otherness. Their emotionless expressions function as mirrors that, rather than reflecting ourselves, question us.

In her work, the moment becomes eternal—not to capture it, but to mark its transience. Painting becomes a gesture against forgetting, but also an acknowledgment of the impossibility of retaining experience.
Elsa Gárate doesn't paint women: she paints presences. She doesn't depict faces: she evokes them. Her work, situated between art, philosophy, and poetic image, reminds us that behind the surface of an image, a deeper truth can lie: that we are gaze, emotion, and movement. That being should not be defined, but should be open—to others, to time, to transformation.

Gárate's studio is located in Nerja, Málaga. Her works have been exhibited in national and international galleries and are part of numerous private collections in Europe, the United States, and Asia.