Alberto Ricardo (XXI) - Joker. Iconos Eternos

Artwork by artist Alberto Ricardo, created using Giclée Printing technique on high-quality professional canvas, 100% cotton, highly resistant to handling and external agents from Eco Canvas Roma Glossy brand, satin finish.
We guarantee a durable product with visual quality.
Painting with dimensions of 60 x 80 cm and a depth of 5 cm.
Limited edition 4 / 5 signed by hand on the front.
On the back of the piece, you will find the details about the work.
The shipment will be made through United Parcel Service (UPS) for Spain and Europe, and through Fedex for the rest of the world.
The work will be rolled and protected with several layers of packaging, bubble nylon, and placed in a sturdy tube.
Once the work has been paid for, three days are required for the packaging process and delivery to the shipping company.
The piece will arrive within ten days, depending on the destination country.

With a visceral stroke and a palette that challenges the stillness of the canvas, artist Alberto Ricardo brings to life a vibrant and deeply expressive series dedicated to the great icons of universal history, art, music, cinema, and pop culture. From legendary figures like Joker, Einstein, Charles Chaplin, Gandhi, or Frida Kahlo, to cultural idols like David Bowie, Mick Jagger, or the reinterpretation of the Mona Lisa, each portrait is an explosion of emotion, color, and character.

The painting technique is characterized by a thick, intense, and gestural brushstroke, almost sculptural, where the pigments seem carved with a spatula rather than applied with a brush. The bold use of color does not aim to depict reality but to amplify the emotional energy of the character: their strength, their legacy, their cultural impact.

The style moves between contemporary expressionism and neo-fauvism, creating a recognizable visual language that celebrates the individuality of each face while unifying the series with a powerful and coherent artistic code.

Each work is an emotional reinterpretation, not a copy: it seeks not to imitate the icon but to revive it, exalt it, rediscover it. Alberto Ricardo transforms these figures into eternal symbols, elevated by the power of color and pure emotion.
We wish for full enjoyment of art.
This limited edition canvas print features a hyper-realistic depiction of the Joker, one of the most complex and disturbing archetypes in contemporary popular culture. The visual quality alludes to digital photorealism, but the use of color and composition clearly nods to pop art with a psychological charge characteristic of neo-expressionism.

The dramatic lighting, with stark contrasts between cool background lights and warm tones in the wardrobe, creates a visual isolation effect that enhances the theatrical character of the figure. The fiery red of the jacket, the vibrant yellow of the vest, and the deep green of the hair form an intentionally disruptive, almost violent color palette that resonates with the chaotic personality of the character. This saturation is not only stylistic but symbolic: these colors are emotional codes that signal warning, madness, and transformation.

The texture of the suit and the face are polished with an almost sculptural precision, yet not lacking in soul: every fold, every shadow in the makeup suggests internal tension, an unspoken story, a contained threat. The close-up framing, which emphasizes the leaning-forward posture and the icy gaze of the Joker, turns the viewer into a potential victim of his attention: the canvas not only shows but confronts.

It is a visual meditation on the figure of the clown as a distorted reflection of society. In this portrait, the Joker is not merely a villain: he is the embodiment of the margin, of the social symptom made flesh. The painted smile is a mask of despair, the comic gesture transformed into a symbol of rupture, alienation, and defiance.

This character, historically linked to chaos and crime, is here presented with a solemnity that borders on the sacred. There is no action in the image, but there is a promise of it: his stillness is a threat, his posture is a message. The lack of narrative context (there's no Gotham, no Batman, no city) strips it of story and turns it into an emblem: the Joker as a pure, abstract, universal icon.

In this sense, the work functions as a mirror: the unsettling aspect is not what the Joker represents, but what it awakens. The viewer is confronted with the discomfort of sympathizing, even minimally, with the abyss. This Joker does not ask for understanding, but demands attention; and in that demand lies the power of the image: an invitation to explore the broken, ironic, and dangerous part of the human condition.

It is not merely a portrait; it is a visual manifesto on contemporary discomfort. In an era where the mask no longer hides but reveals, where humor intertwines with rage, this work stands as an aesthetic testimony to the most uncomfortable figure in the collective imagination: one that, without heroes in sight, forces us to look at what we do not want to see about ourselves.