URBAN LIGHTS. Josep Segú, La Vanguardia (April 2008)

Carlos Díaz’s exhibition takes on special significance in his career, as it is backed by his recent participation in the Spanish realism group exhibition in Germany, In the Light of Reality, at the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen (August 2007). This highly prestigious exhibition establishes him as one of the few chosen to represent the excellent standard of the Spanish painting scene.

Very few artists have painted Barcelona’s trees with such a descriptive approach as Carlos Díaz. Light swirls around the city’s plane trees—symbols of Barcelona’s stillness and serenity—magnifying the bulges of their trunks, the cracks, and the textures of their bark. The sunlight hits these elements, generating patches of color that shift from green to gray and then to a warm toasted shade.

Díaz skillfully reconstructs the walls of partially demolished buildings with precise strokes of a palette knife and brush. He paints worn facades, uncovering graffiti, rips, and bruises that have survived the wrecking process.

In this exhibition, we could be looking at any quiet provincial city, with its Main Street and its central square, if not for the moving cars—captured with remarkable precision—that add a touch of modernity, contrasting with the melancholy of the walls and the stillness of the trees. Carlos Díaz portrays a charming, working-class Barcelona, which, one day—not too far from now—will overwhelm us with its cultural dynamism. A city that, despite its fears and uncertainties, continues to surprise us with an ever-growing group of outstanding realist painters.