Paul Blanca - from the Chocolat series on dibond

Large color photo on Dibond in very good condition. from one of Blanca's most popular series.
Acquired from private collection. Signed with silver marker. Can be hung on the wall!

You can view the work in advance at the Rotor gallery in Gorinchem and pick it up after the auction or have it sent by registered post.
After consultation, you can have your purchases stored in our heated storage space and collect them at a later stage.

We can also take care of your framing.



This item falls under the margin scheme


Paul Blanca, pseudonym of Paul Vlaswinkel, (Curaçao, November 11, 1958 – Amsterdam, October 15, 2021) was a Dutch photographer. In his younger years he was described as a 'volatile' person with a lot of energy, but at the same time with a vulnerable sensitivity. Blanca made portraits in which he molested himself with razors, wire, arrows, nails, and needle and thread. One of his most famous photos is of a crying Mickey Mouse carved into Blanca's back.
Life and work
In his younger years, Blanca practiced the sport of kickboxing at a high level. According to him, his first camera was a Canon F1, a camera he acquired through a burglary. Once he started as a young photographer, Blanca worked with Hans van Manen and, as a non-dancer, he was given a leading role in Van Manen's Piano Variations IV. His developed motor skills and kickboxing skills were central to the choreography devised for him. As photographers, Blanca and Van Manen worked together on a series of photos in which they photographed themselves, each other and others, with the theme: 'The man as an object of desire'.
In the mid-eighties Blanca became friends with fellow artists such as Rob Scholte and Koos Dalstra. With Dalstra he published a series of double portraits Timing in 1986. Fifty portraits of people from the Amsterdam art world with photos by Blanca and poems by Dalstra. Blanca also met and befriended the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In the field of photography, Mapplethorpe considered Blanca "his only competitor".
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, Blanca spent about two years in Zaragoza and documented bullfighting there. This ultimately resulted in a series of screen prints called Sangre de Toro (Blood of the Bull). Instead of ink, he actually used the blood of the bulls for the prints. Around this time Blanca also started writing columns, first for a year for Het Parool but later also for Nieuwe Revu. In this magazine he not only reported on his life as an artist, but also on his life as a drug addict and his experiences with the criminal circuit.
In the mid-1990s, Blanca was accused of the bomb attack on Rob Scholte and his then wife Micky Hoogendijk. Scholte himself made this accusation in an interview, an accusation that would never be proven. The result of this affair was that Blanca lost his popularity as a photographer and became increasingly isolated within the art world
In 2021, the film Paul Blanca, This film saves your life by director Ramón Gieling, was released. This documentary provides a portrait of Blanca's great talent and his life, work and downfall. The film was announced upon release with a salutation that it looked like it "doesn't have long to live."
Blanca passed away on October 15, 2021 at the age of 62