The Train Station

What you are looking at

A man in a dark suit pulls a woman close. She leans back in his arms with her eyes shut and her red lips parted in a smile, dark hair spilling over her shoulders, one gold earring catching the light. His face is turned away from us, buried in her neck; only his slicked-back hair and the curve of his cheek show. Her pale hand rests against his back. Behind them is a gray-blue wall studded with rows of rivets, the side of a railway carriage, with smears of rust and orange.

Most of the canvas is very dark, a mass of black suit and black dress. Light falls only on her face, her throat and her hand.

The artist

Fabián Pérez (born 1967 in Buenos Aires) is a self-taught figurative painter who lived in Italy and Japan before settling in Southern California. His work returns again and again to a small cast of characters: couples dancing tango, men in fedoras smoking, women at bars and in doorways, often lit as if on a film set. He has said that many of these scenes grow out of memories of his father, who ran nightclubs in Buenos Aires. His paintings circulate widely as limited-edition prints on canvas, and many have several versions.

This picture belongs to that world. The railway carriage turns the embrace into a scene of arrival or parting, the kind of moment staged in countless films set on station platforms.

Close looking

The paint is loose and quick. The suit is laid in with broad, flat strokes of black and blue-black, with almost no detail. By contrast, the woman's face is modeled with care: a warm highlight on her cheekbone, a cool shadow under her jaw, a precise line of red at the mouth. That contrast between rough and polished is typical of Pérez.

The signature at lower right is painted in the same bright red as her lips, so the eye travels from mouth to signature and back. The rivets on the carriage wall are a few dark dots, enough to place us on the platform.

Where to see it

We have not been able to confirm the date, size or present owner of this particular painting, and versions of Pérez's compositions often exist as prints. See another of his couples in The Embrace II and more of the artist on his page, Fabián Pérez. For older images of lovers, compare The Kiss by Francesco Hayez.